Ibn Battuta — "The women of this land are very beautiful, but they paint their faces with a whi…"
The women of this land are very beautiful, but they paint their faces with a white paste that makes them look like ghosts.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"I saw in this city a strange custom: the women do not veil themselves, and they are not ashamed of this."
"I saw a bird that was as large as a camel, and it had a long neck."
"In this country, the women are beautiful, and they do not wear veils. They are skilled in spinning and weaving."
"The people of this country are very fond of chess, and they play it all day long."
"I saw a rhinoceros for the first time near the Indus River. It looked like a huge pig with a horn on its nose, and it was uglier than anything I had ever seen."
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.