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Travels with a Tangerine
Travels with a Tangerine: A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutah | Tim Mackintosh-Smith
4 posts | 4 read | 5 to read
Ibn Battutah set out in 1325 from his native Tangier on the pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned twenty-nine years later, he had visited most of the known world, travelling three times the distance Marco Polo covered. Spiritual backpacker, social climber, temporary hermit and failed ambassador, he braved brigands, blisters and his own prejudices. The outcome was a monumental travel classic. Captivated by this indefatigable man, award-winning travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith set out on his own eventful journey, retracing the Moroccan's eccentric trip from Tangier to Constantinople. Tim proves himself a perfect companion to this distant traveller, and the result is an amazing blend of personalities, history and contemporary observation.
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ReadingEnvy
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Tim Mackintosh-Smith traces some of the travels of Ibn Battuta, an avid traveler of North Africa and the Middle East in the Middle Ages. The writing is dense (he loves a good turn of phrase) but I enjoyed reading it, visiting the late 1990s version of some of these places, with the underlying current of the 14th century - Tangiers, Alexandria, Aleppo, Sur, etc. ⤵️

ReadingEnvy Some of these locations have been forever changed in the 21st century so this was a bit of time traveling. The author talks about how the world feels like it contracts or expands depending on how easy it is to travel - Ibn Battuta did most of his travels as the Black Plague started, which reduced travel and trade worldwide. Funny how we are in a similar situation right now!
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umbrellagirl

Few stork-revering peoples have gone quite as far as the Maghribis: according to Ali Bey, the endowments of the Fez lunatic asylum were regularly diverted to pay for the nursing of sick storks, which were believed to be temporarily transmogrified humans.

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umbrellagirl
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Because we can‘t go anywhere at the moment.

Hoping it‘s as good as William Dalrymple‘s early travel stuff.

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Smrloomis
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🤔 Didn‘t know there was this Kindle edition. Very handy since I want to revisit some of this book and don‘t have a paper copy. I remember loving it when I first read it.