Ibn Battuta — "The fruits in this land are very sweet and juicy. I ate so many that my stomach …"
The fruits in this land are very sweet and juicy. I ate so many that my stomach ached.
The fruits in this land are very sweet and juicy. I ate so many that my stomach ached.
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"The people of this land are a bad people, and they are not trustworthy."
"The women of this land dye their teeth black. It is considered beautiful, but I found it quite strange."
"Among their odious customs is that women do not veil themselves, and they are not ashamed of this. Many of the women I saw were more beautiful than the men."
"This is a people who do not know the true religion, and they are misguided."
"The men of this land wear skirts instead of trousers. It is a strange fashion, but they seem comfortable in it."
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.
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