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.
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"The Chinese use paper money, which is the strangest thing I have ever seen. A man can carry around his entire wealth in his sleeve!"
"The people of this country are very fond of chess, and they play it all day long."
"The people of this city are very religious. They pray five times a day and fast during the month of Ramadan."
"I saw a man in this city who had a pet monkey that was trained to steal things from people's pockets. It was quite amusing to watch."
"I saw a man in this city who had a third eye on his forehead. He was a very wise man, and people came from far and wide to seek his counsel."
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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