Today, the vast array of transportation and infrastructure at our disposal has made it relatively easy for us to travel from one country to another; even when these countries are thousands of kilometers away from each other. However, during the 13th and 14th centuries, traveling was not so easy. Yet two men, the Italian trader Marco Polo and the Moroccan jurist Ibn Battuta, became famous for being able to make very long distance journeys far from their home country. At the end of their extensive travels, both men shared their experiences with the world through the books The Travels of Marco Polo and The Travels of Ibn Battuta. The analysis of these two texts reveals two things. On the one hand, Marco Polo remained a cultural outsider to the people he met during his travels, thus increasing his powers of observation and stimulating his curiosity. On the other hand, Ibn Battuta traveled as an insider, and consequently judged the people he met only in light of his Muslim origin. For the sake of better understanding, I begin by providing some background information about each of the two men. Marco Polo was an Italian citizen born into a wealthy Venetian merchant family. His most significant travel experience occurred in 1271, when he set out with his father Nicolò and uncle Maffeo on a trip to the court of the Mongol emperor of China, Kubilai Khan. Polo returned only twenty-four years later to his homeland, Venice. On the other hand, Ibn Battuta was a Moroccan jurist who left his hometown, Tangier, in 1325, on a journey eastward that would cover a total of seventy-five thousand miles and keep him twenty-nine years away from home. In this essay I will deal mainly with the aforementioned ex...... middle of paper ......al the differences in the narratives of The Travels of Marco Polo and The Travels of Ibn Battuta, it should be recognized that both provide much practical information and knowledge to readers. Works Cited Dunn, Ross E., The Adventures of Ibn Battuta, a Fourteenth-Century Muslim Traveler, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986; London: Croom Helm, 1986.Hage, G. “Insiders and Outsiders” in Beilharz, P. and Hogan, T. (eds.).Sociology: Place, Time and Division. South Melbourne: Oxford University .2006Ibn Battuta, Travels in Asia and Africa 1325-1354, tr. and ed. HAR Gibb (London: Broadway House, 1929) Polo, Marco. The travels of Marco Polo: the Venetian. Trans. |. Marsden-Wright. New York:Orion, 1958. Print.Wolf, Ken. Personality and problems: interpretive essays in world civilizations. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 2005. Print.