Comment by zbentley | Hacker News Reader

Comment by zbentley | Hacker News Reader

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I researched this story previously, and it really is fascinating--especially as counterpoint to the stories of Marco Polo, a lot of which are, if not actually fabricated by the man himself and his colleagues[1], definitely "stretched" for truth to the extreme.

On the other hand, the documentation on Ibn Battuta's travels, even accounting for a large amount of historical skew, is informed by a lot more primary source material and other parties' accounts than Marco Polo's.

Because his writings are (in translation at least) incredibly accessible as stories, I've always hoped to see them getting assigned as reading to young primary school kids. A long time ago, I lobbied for that at some private/public schools in Colorado (and offered to help formulate curricula or engage with the material in after school history clubs), but because of some pretty blatant Islamophobia, nothing came of it. Ah well, boring, unengaging textbooks it is, then.

[1] http://www.davidmeyercreations.com/mysteries-of-history/was-...

It would break both the "Muslim as cultural Other" narrative and, with all the accounts of saintly miracles, the scientific materialist narrative they are pushing as well. Unfortunately, the primary schools are going to prioritize goodthink over education.

You tried at least, which is more than most people do.

I know people who would be interested in translating such writings for kids if they can get grants for it. I doubt the latter is hard.

Email me with address in profile. In short, we can discuss privately how Islamophobia will not be an issue with me and my clique. There is also a nascent Arabic pedagogy demand for private schools in the east coast US teaching to non natives and significant numbers non-Muslim I'll see if we can find you an audience.

Is there a book you'd recommend for casual adult reading?

As ibn_ibid suggested, getting a translation of The Travels is really the best thing to do. It's a lovely read, with none of the archaic oddities of, say, more-or-less literal translations of Homer or older texts. I think that high quality is due to three things: an excellent translation by Mackintosh-Smith; the fact that the original material was written as reportage/prose, not poetry or correspondence; and that Ibn Battuta was just a damn good writer--Rusticello wrote like a paperback novelist forced to write nonfiction, and it showed.

Dunn's "The Adventures of Ibn Battuta" is also trenchant. But really start with The Travels.

Tim Mackintosh-Smith's translation is eminently readable with comprehensive notes - https://www.amazon.com/Travels-Battutah-Macmillan-Collectors...

Would you be so kind pointing me to these resources you have?

See my and others' comments elsewhere in this thread: most of the resources in question are the primary text and analyses of it.

because of some pretty blatant Islamophobia, nothing came of it

The Persians and Lysistrata were written and first performed during mortal conflicts with the Persian Empire and the city-state of Sparta, respectively and do not vilify the enemy. The Athenians were more advanced than the citizens of Colorado, it must be said.

You're taking it on OPs word that it was 'blatant Islamophobia' that prevented his plans from going through.

Changing a school curriculum, especially as an outsider, is incredibly difficult. Unless OP was told 'we don't like Muslims and don't want to hear their stories', I am incredulous that the real reason is blatant Islamophobia across the leaders of multiple private and public schools.

Bigotry was a sticking point; you're perfectly correct that there were many subsequent hurdles to cross had we not run into that one. It may not have worked out, and I agree that such changes are difficult.

In this case, however, it was reasonably blatant:

I spoke to the two leading (and, I believe, only) exclusively history teachers at the local public (middle and high) school. This was in a very small community: less than 10k population. One of them was an acquaintance of mine, and had indicated that they were having problems with student engagement. They were initially receptive given my previous work with them. To be clear, I wasn't coming at them with "here's a new entire curriculum I wrote; replace yours" or "you're doing it wrong", but rather an idea that we'd have a few weekend sit-down sessions together and come up with a way to structure some world history units around Ibn Battuta's writing as a jumping off point (not as the primary text, but as a means of creating engagement--think "you've read some of the textbook history of Somalia and the passages about it from 'The Travels'; explain how Ibn Battuta's observations reflect the economic, religious, and environmental realities discussed in $big_dry_textbook").

However, when I explained that this was a work by a Muslim scholar and that his religion was a frequent presence in his work, two things happened: my acquaintance immediately asked if it would be worth the time to "cut" around any references to Islam in writing by/about Ibn Battuta that we might use (taking for granted that it would be excised, just questioning the difficulty). Then, his colleague said, and I believe this is verbatim, "I'd rather not bring in [to the classroom] material from that faith." We gave up more or less immediately after that. Perhaps I should have negotiated differently or tried harder.

I also spoke to the principal/lead teacher of a very small/remedial private school in my area, and he candidly indicated that his close relationship with some of his students' parents concerned him regarding the frequency of references to Islam throughout the source material. Unlike the other two, he actually took the time to read it, and gave a candid answer, which I appreciated.

Edit: missed details.

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