HI163 - Galleons and Caravans

Lecture Week 10. Maps and Travellers

Wednesday 5 December 2007

Tutor: Giorgio Riello

Lecture outline
  1. Introduction
  2. Mapping the early modern world
  3. Marco Polo and his travelogue
  4. Ibn Battuta and the account of his travels
  5. Interpretations of the genre
  6. How do readings of Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta fit into Galleons & Caravans?

  1. Introduction

One of the main transformations of the world between 1300 and 1800 is probably the transformation in the conception of the world

  1. Mapping the early modern world
  2. Map making in Arab world, Muhammad al-Idrisi, 1100-c. 1166
  3. Tabula Rogeriana --- together ‘‘Roger’s book”
  4. Geographia --- al-Kitab al-Rujari
  5. Map making in European world
  6. 1583-84 Lucas Jansz Waghenaer,Spiegel der Zeevaert (pilot book)
  7. Hessel Gerritsz, 1580-1632
  1. Ibn Battuta and the account of his travels
  2. Ibn Battuta the man and his times
  3. expansion of Islam as a model of civilised life / Pax Mongolica
  4. Born in Tangier in Morocco in 1304, studied law, and left his home in 1325 hajj to Mecca. 1341 went on a diplomatic mission to the Mongol emperor of China, home in 1349, 1353 across the Sahara to Mali in West Africa. Died in 1368.
  5. What did he write?
  6. Rihla
  7. Ibn Juzayy recorded his experiences
  8. Significance?
  9. portrait of cosmopolitan Muslim world
  10. integration across the Afro-Eurasian continent.
  11. traveller in four different ways
  1. Marco Polo and his travelogue
  2. Marco Polo the man and his times
  3. Pax Mongolica.
  4. 1250’s three Venetian brothers (Marco, Niccolo, Maffeo).
  5. Niccolo’s son Marco born in 1254.
  6. Where did he travel?
  7. Arrived in China in 1275, spent 17 years in China, back in 1295. Died in 1324
  8. What did he write?
  9. Rustichello da Pisa.
  10. Il Milione, Discovery of the World
  11. Significance
  12. Merchant handbook?
  13. Olschki
  14. Larner
  1. Interpretations of the genre
  2. The post-colonial context
  3. The gender of travel
  4. Travelers and travel liars.
  5. Identity created through the process of ‘othering’.
  1. Interpreting Marco Polo and Ibn Battuta for Galleons and Caravans
  2. Reading them in context.
  3. Identity and othering in Ibn Battuta
  4. Narratives of encounter are dominated by the viewpoint of the mobile culture, but is superiority necessarily implied?

“Damascus stands on the place where Cain killed his brother Abel, and is an exceedingly noble, glorious, and beauteous city, rich in all manner of merchandise, and everywhere delightful … abounding in food, spices, precious stones, silk, pearls, cloth-of-gold, perfumes from India, Tartary, Egypt, Syria, and places on our side of the Mediterranean and all precious things that the heart of man can conceive. It is begirt with gardens and orchards, is watered both within and without by waters, rivers, brooks, and fountains, cunningly arranged, to minister men’s luxury, and is incredibly populous, being inhabited by divers trades of most cunning and noble workmen, mechanics, and merchants, while within the walls it is adorned beyond belief by baths, by birds that sings all the year round, and by pleasures, refreshments, and amusements of all kinds.”

Ibn Battuta, Rihla, 9 August 1326