Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
1291
The Vivaldi brothers of Genoa attempt to sail around Africa to the East. Although their exped-
ition disappears, it represents a new adventurous spirit in Europe as well as a rejection of the idea
that it is impossible to sail around the tip of Africa.
1374
Death of Ibn Battutah, the greatest medieval Arab traveler, known as the “Arab Marco Polo.”
His topic,
Travels
, describes his extensive journeys throughout the Muslim world, China, and Rus-
sia—journeys totaling some seventy-five thousand miles (at a time when there were definitely no
frequent-flier bonuses).
Geographic Voices
From
Travels in Asia and Africa
(1354), by Ibn Battutah (b. 1304), writing of his trip
to Mali and his stay with Muslim Negroes in the Niger River area
Another of their good qualities is their habit of wearing clean, white garments on Fridays. Even
if a man has nothing but an old worn shirt, he washes it and cleans it, and wears it to the Friday
service. Yet another is their zeal for learning Koran by heart. They put their children in chains if
they show any backwardness in memorizing it, and they are not set free until they have it by heart.
I visited the
qadi
in his house on the day of the festival. His children were chained up, so I said to
him, “Will you not let them loose?” He replied, “I shall not do so until they have learned Koran by
heart.”
Among their bad qualities are the following. The women servants, slave girls and young girls go
about in front of everyone naked, without a stitch of clothing on them. Women go into the sultan's
presence naked and without coverings, and his daughters also go about naked. Then there is their
custom of putting dust and ashes on their heads, as a mark of respect, and the grotesque ceremonies
we have described wherein the poets recite their verse. Another reprehensible practice among many
of them is the eating of carrion, dogs and asses. . . .
We halted near this channel at a large village, which had as its governor a Negro, a pilgrim and a
man of fine character named Farba Magha. He was one of the Negroes who made the pilgrimage in
the company of the Sultan Mansa Musa. Farba Magha told me that when Mansa Musa came to this
channel, he had with him a
qadi
, a white man. This
qadi
attempted to make away with four thou-
sand mithqals and the sultan, on learning of it, was enraged at him and exiled him to the country of
the heathen cannibals. He lived among them for four years, at the end of which the sultan sent him
back to his own country. The reason why the heathens did not eat him was that he was white, for
they say that the white is indigestible because he is not “ripe,” whereas the black man is “ripe” in
their opinion.
1375
The
Catalan Atlas
is completed by Abraham Cresques. A spectacular map, commissioned as a
gift for the king of France, the atlas contains tantalizing stories of the riches of Mali in West Africa,
where gold “grew like carrots,” was brought up “by ants in the form of nuggets” and was mined by
“naked men who lived in holes.”
15th century
Ptolemy's
Geographia
is revived in Europe during the Renaissance.
1405
The Chinese begin voyages in the Indian Ocean under Admiral Zheng He, the Three-Jewel
Eunuch, who is later known as the Chinese Christopher Columbus for his wide-ranging voyages.
