Ibn Battuta — "The people of this country are very hospitable, but they have a strange custom: …"
The people of this country are very hospitable, but they have a strange custom: they shave their heads and beards.
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More from Ibn Battuta
"Never did I see a man who was more eager to make gifts and to shed blood."
"I have travelled to many lands and seen many things, but I have never seen a people so fond of bathing as the Indians. They bathe even in the cold of winter!"
"I saw a woman in this city who had a pet tiger. She walked it on a leash like a dog. I was quite astonished."
"The inhabitants of this country are all polytheists, and they worship idols. They have a temple where they perform their rites."
"Traveling gives you home in a thousand strange places, then leaves you a stranger in your own land."
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.