Ibn Battuta — "Traveling gives you home in a thousand strange places, then leaves you a strange…"
Traveling gives you home in a thousand strange places, then leaves you a stranger in your own land.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"Their women do not veil themselves, and they are not ashamed."
"In Constantinople, I saw a church so large it could hold ten thousand people. The Christians there worship idols, but their buildings are magnificent."
"The women of this land are very beautiful, but they paint their faces with a white paste that makes them look like ghosts."
"I was once given a magic carpet in this land, but it did not fly. It was just a very beautiful rug."
"I saw a bird that was as large as a camel, and it had a long neck."
About Ibn Battuta (1304-1369)
Moroccan Muslim scholar and explorer whose Rihla (travels) covered ~75,000 miles across the Islamic world from Mali to China — the most-traveled person of the medieval world. Closely associated with Marco Polo (his Venetian counterpart, traveling 50 years earlier in the opposite direction). For an intellectual contrast, see medieval European Christian insularity, the sheltered monastic-feudal worldview of 14th-century Latin Christendom — Ibn Battuta's 30-year journey demonstrates that the 14th-century Dar al-Islam was a single intellectual ecosystem from West Africa to Beijing, while medieval Europe was still tribal and parochial. The cleanest 'connectedness vs insularity' contrast in pre-modern history — Battuta could find a familiar Maliki judge in any city from Mali to Sumatra.