Our 10th century traveller, Ahmad ibn Fadlan, settles in among the Bulgars, develops a distaste for their fish-oil based food, and is terrified by events in the sky.
Marco and the Polos 6: The Grand Tour
One of the areas of the Marco Polo text I really haven’t done justice to yet is his description of the world outside of China, so that’s what I’m doing today: talking about the images he brought back to Venice and Europe. It’s Marco the travel guide; it’s one late 13th-century understanding of the world, or at least that part of it between Southeast Asia and the African coast.