(Extremely crucial that there is a thesis statement and feel free to do some research in order to better understand the topics if needed)
Most of the civilizations of the world prior to the thirteenth century were relatively isolated from one another. Long distance travel and trade were difficult and rare, and contacts between diverse regions and cultures of the world were limited. But, with the beginnings of land, sea, and sand trade routes, that changed. By the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries travelers began to venture beyond the confines of their homeland with the expressed purpose of experiencing and documenting peoples and cultures of the world.
Two examples of such travelers are Marco Polo and Abu Abdullah Muhammad ibn Battuta. Marco Polo was a Venetian merchant and explorer who travelled the Silk Road between 1271-1295 and documented the peoples and cultures he encountered throughout Asia, including that of the Mongol city of Kinsay. Ibn Batutta was a Muslim Moroccan scholar who travelled throughout Dar al-Islamthe vast geographical extent of the Islamic worldto experience the local cultural and social diversity within the Islamic world between 1325-1354.
Both travelers documented their journeys in great detail, offering a kind of early cultural anthropology, and providing readers in their home countries with glimpses of distant lands and peoples they never imagined.
For the second paper, read the following excerpts from Ibn Batutta and Marco Polo and formulate a comparative analysis of the two travelers’ accounts:
Marco Polo: The Glories Of Kinsay [Hangchow] (Links to an external site.) https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/polo-kinsay.asp
Travels of Ibn Batuta in Asia and Africa (Links to an external site.)
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/source/batuta.asp
In your paper develop an interpretation of the significance of these two sources as a means for developing an historical understanding of the encounters between different cultures. Consider the similarities and differences between the texts of Batutta and Polo in the following related questions as you develop a thesis for your paper (although you do not necessarily have to answer each or all of these questions):
What are the purposes and motivations of Batutta and Polo writing these accounts? Who are their intended audiences?
How do they each depict the cultures and peoples they experience? Are their accounts descriptive and objective? Or are they prescriptive and judgmental? Or a combination of both?
Although we have not yet had the opportunity to discuss in detail the historical development of the worlds of Christendom and Islam where Batutta and Polo come from. Nonetheless their writings reveal their own cultural contexts as much as the cultures they write about. How do Batutta’s and Polo’s own cultures affect the ways in which they see and experience the peoples and cultures of their travels?
