Ibn Battuta — "The people of this country are very ignorant, and they do not know the religion."
The people of this country are very ignorant, and they do not know the religion.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"The dogs in this land are very fierce. They bark at strangers and try to bite them. I had to carry a stick to fend them off."
"The Chinese are infidels, but they are a good people."
"I was once shipwrecked on an island where the people were cannibals. I managed to escape by pretending to be mad."
"I was once offered a camel as a gift, but I declined, for I had no place to keep it."
"I have indeed - praise be to God - attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the earth, and I have attained in this respect what no other person has attained to my knowledge."
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.