Ibn Battuta — "I saw in this city many things that are forbidden in Islam."
I saw in this city many things that are forbidden in Islam.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"The people of this country are very ignorant, and they do not know the religion."
"I was once given a parrot that could speak many languages. It was a very intelligent bird, and I enjoyed its company."
"The people of this land are a bad people, and they are not trustworthy."
"The people of this city are very strange. They eat rice with their hands, and they do not use spoons or forks like us."
"This is a people who do not know the true religion, and they are misguided."
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.