Ibn Battuta — "I was invited to a feast, and they served me a dish of roasted dog."
I was invited to a feast, and they served me a dish of roasted dog.
I was invited to a feast, and they served me a dish of roasted dog.
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"The people of this city are very hospitable. They invited me into their homes and fed me delicious meals, even though I was a stranger."
"I saw a man who had two heads, and another who had three legs, and another who had a hand like an elephant's trunk."
"The Chinese are infidels, but they are a good people."
"I saw a river in this land that flowed with milk and honey. It was a miraculous sight, though I suspect it was a trick of the light."
"The houses in this land are made of mud and straw, and they are very small. I had to bend over to enter them."
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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