Ibn Battuta — "The people of this city are very fond of music and dancing. They have festivals …"
The people of this city are very fond of music and dancing. They have festivals every night, and the streets are always full of revelry.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Ibn Battuta
"I saw a woman who had a beard, and she was very old."
"In Anatolia, I met a dervish who could make himself invisible. Or at least, that's what he claimed. I never saw him do it."
"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."
"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 given a girl slave as a gift, and she was very beautiful."
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.