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| The Entertainment Review |
| By: Stewart Gordon Publisher: Da Capo Press |
When the world as everyone now knows it was shut down in that mysterious period known as the Dark Ages, the
world as known to the Islamic people of that period was thriving, bathed in the light of learning, trade, and progress.
Asia was considered to be the world, stretching from Japan to Arabia, with tentacles into northern Africa and
Southern Spain. Stewart Gordon illuminates this era and its meaning by means of vignettes of people who traveled
through that world. Travel is always enriching and educating, and Stewart, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for
South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan, adds to the readers knowledge base in this captivating collection
of travelogues, carefully providing the backdrop for each scene that is set.
Ibn Battuta was one man who made the sacred hajj over the course of 16 months, beginning in his native Morocco
and writing as he journeyed. He had to turn back once and got married twice. After the hajj was completed, he
borrowed money to go to India, assaying a loan for luxurious gifts to give to Sultan Muhammed Tughluq in Delhi. He
had learned that if the Sultan was pleased with his gifts, he would offer their bearer employment. It was a major
financial risk to bring offerings purchased with a loan which Ibn Battuta could not have repaid without the employment
he hoped for, but the practice was not unknown. Through travel a man could become, like Batutta, a “management
consultant” who told one king the doings of another. At one such encounter, deep in Central Asia, Battuta recorded:
“After I had saluted him he sat down and asked me about myself and my journey, and whom I had met of sultans; I
answered all his questions and after a short stay he went away and sent a horse with a saddle and a robe.”
Once he made it to Delhi, traveling with an entourage of forty people and a thousand horses, Battuta’s gamble paid
off. The Sultan made him a city judge, a job he could fulfill “though he knew no local language, because Sharia law
across the whole of the Muslim world was essentially the same.”
From China, translator Ma Huan, also a Muslim, sailed east, recording the quaint customs and folkways of the people
he observed along the way, including storytellers and street magicians. His writings are an attempt at intercultural
understanding, aimed at drawing parallels, explaining the bizarre ways of foreigners, some of whom, as in Java, slept
without beds, sat without stools, and ate without spoons or chopsticks.
Well illustrated, each chapter of this book is revealing and rich in discovery and as enjoyable as a multi-national trip.
In fact, this would be a marvelous book to take on a trip, especially if you’re going east. This isn’t the type of book
that any travel will want to read, especially those that are simply traveling around the United States. However, those
that are traveling around Asia will want to take a look at this book.
world as known to the Islamic people of that period was thriving, bathed in the light of learning, trade, and progress.
Asia was considered to be the world, stretching from Japan to Arabia, with tentacles into northern Africa and
Southern Spain. Stewart Gordon illuminates this era and its meaning by means of vignettes of people who traveled
through that world. Travel is always enriching and educating, and Stewart, Senior Research Scholar at the Center for
South Asian Studies at the University of Michigan, adds to the readers knowledge base in this captivating collection
of travelogues, carefully providing the backdrop for each scene that is set.
Ibn Battuta was one man who made the sacred hajj over the course of 16 months, beginning in his native Morocco
and writing as he journeyed. He had to turn back once and got married twice. After the hajj was completed, he
borrowed money to go to India, assaying a loan for luxurious gifts to give to Sultan Muhammed Tughluq in Delhi. He
had learned that if the Sultan was pleased with his gifts, he would offer their bearer employment. It was a major
financial risk to bring offerings purchased with a loan which Ibn Battuta could not have repaid without the employment
he hoped for, but the practice was not unknown. Through travel a man could become, like Batutta, a “management
consultant” who told one king the doings of another. At one such encounter, deep in Central Asia, Battuta recorded:
“After I had saluted him he sat down and asked me about myself and my journey, and whom I had met of sultans; I
answered all his questions and after a short stay he went away and sent a horse with a saddle and a robe.”
Once he made it to Delhi, traveling with an entourage of forty people and a thousand horses, Battuta’s gamble paid
off. The Sultan made him a city judge, a job he could fulfill “though he knew no local language, because Sharia law
across the whole of the Muslim world was essentially the same.”
From China, translator Ma Huan, also a Muslim, sailed east, recording the quaint customs and folkways of the people
he observed along the way, including storytellers and street magicians. His writings are an attempt at intercultural
understanding, aimed at drawing parallels, explaining the bizarre ways of foreigners, some of whom, as in Java, slept
without beds, sat without stools, and ate without spoons or chopsticks.
Well illustrated, each chapter of this book is revealing and rich in discovery and as enjoyable as a multi-national trip.
In fact, this would be a marvelous book to take on a trip, especially if you’re going east. This isn’t the type of book
that any travel will want to read, especially those that are simply traveling around the United States. However, those
that are traveling around Asia will want to take a look at this book.
