"Bruce Sterling - My Rihla" - читать интересную книгу автора (Sterling Bruce)

Bruce Sterling
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CATSCAN 7 "My Rihla"

Abu 'Abdallah ibn Battuta, gentleman and
scholar, late of Tangier, Morocco, has been dead for
six hundred and thirty years. To be remembered under
such circumstances is a feat to compel respect.
Ibn Battuta is known today because he happened
to write a book--or rather, he dictated one, in his
retirement, to a Granadian scribe--called _A Gift to
the Observers, Concerning the Curiosities of Cities
and the Marvels Encountered in Travels_. It's more
often known as "The Rihla of Ibn Battuta," rihla being
an Arabic literary term denoting a pious work
concerned with holy pilgrimage and foreign travel.
Sometimes known as "the Marco Polo of Islam,"
Ibn Battuta claimed to have traveled some seventy
thousand miles during the years 1325-1354, visiting
China, Arabia, India, Ghana, Constantinople, the
Maldive Islands, Indonesia, Anatolia, Persia, Iraq,
Sicily, Zanzibar . . . on foot, mind you, or in camel
caravans, or in flimsy medieval Arab dhows, sailing
the monsoon trade winds.
Ibn Battuta travelled for the sake of knowledge
and spiritual advancement, to meet holy men, and to
listen to the wisdom of kings, emirs, and atabegs. On
occasion, he worked as a judge or a courtier, but
mostly he dealt in information--the gossip of the
road, tales of his travels, second-hand homilies
garnered from famous Sufi mystics. He covered a great
deal of territory, but mere exploration was not the
source of his pride.
Mere distance mattered little to Ibn Battuta -- in
any case, he had a rather foggy notion of geography.
But his Moslem universe was cosmopolitan to an extent
unrivalled 'till the modern era. Every pious Moslem,
from China to Chad, was expected to make the holy
pilgrimage to Mecca--and they did so, in vast hordes.
It was a world on the move. In his twenty-year
peregrinations. Ibn Battuta met the same people again
and again. An Arab merchant, for instance, selling
silk in Qanjanfu, China, whose brother sold tangeri

nes
in Fez (or fezzes in Tangier, presumably, when he got
the chance). "How far apart they are," Ibn Battuta
commented mildly. It was not remarkable.
Travel was hazardous, and, of course, very slow.
But the trade routes were open, the caravanserais--