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Loading... Travels with a Tangerine : A Journey in the Footnotes of Ibn Battutahby Tim MacKintosh-Smith
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. Great story - looking forward to reading "Hall of a Thousand Columns" (further travels with Ibn Battutah)! (  )Seajack | Jun 25, 2008 |   This is a travel book, obviously. The author went travelling around... a whole lot of places, following the route of Ibn Batuttah, a Moroccan Muslim of the 14th century who travelled a massive distance and wrote a book about it. This only follows the first part of his route, up until Constantinople. It was an interesting read - the author clearly knew a lot about the history of the places he was visiting, at least as regards the 14th century - but since I know really nothing about that part of the world or that period in history, I think a lot of it was lost on me. So, although I enjoyed it, I don't think I'm going to read the follow-up. I did discover (while channel-hopping) that there was a tv adaptation on BBC4, which I've got hold of, so I'm going to watch that to a) find out how to pronounce some of the things he was talking about and b) attempt to get some of his interesting facts to sink in to my brain this time. (  )tronella | Mar 12, 2008 | Travels with a Tangerine by Tim Macintosh-Smith is a slow read, but one that I savored. It is a travel book that describes the wonders of travel by following the footsteps of the fourteenth century pilgrim, Ibn Battutah who had “the specific sense of [the]mystical,[and]transcendental” (114). I like when an author introduces new ideas, images, places, and vocabulary in the rich context of history. The lush text reads with a sensual and conversational intimacy. Some of his expressions are new to me, just as they are when one travels. “The air from the Rosetta, or Bolbitine, branch of the Nile was fresh, but the teahouse was fuggy with gossip” (65). Fuggy, I would ask if I was there, but the dictionary is always available to the reader to help clarify-- musty and stale. Highlights: The description of Cairo in the 1300’s (83+), the vivid detail of architectural descriptions throughout, brief discussion on copromania (74), chewing tambul (betel) (234+) or qat, the description and experience of the whirling dervishes (277+). As I was reading about Smith’s experience in Crimea (401+), I coincidentally bumped into a fascinating discussion by Errol Morris on Susan Sontag’s comment about Roger Fenton’s photographs during the Crimean War (http://morris.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/... ) Overall—Tim Macintosh-Smith provides a richly informative read. (  )beahgo | Dec 30, 2007 | 0.026 seconds to build listing  no reviews | add a review
Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0812971647, Paperback)In 1325, the great Arab traveler Ibn Battutah set out from his native Tangier in North Africa on pilgrimage to Mecca. By the time he returned nearly thirty years later, he had seen most of the known world, covering three times the distance allegedly traveled by the great Venetian explorer Marco Polo—some 75,000 miles in all.Captivated by Ibn Battutah’s account of his journey, the Arabic scholar and award-winning travel writer Tim Mackintosh-Smith set out to follow in the peripatetic Moroccan’s footsteps. Traversing Egyptian deserts and remote islands in the Arabian Sea, visiting castles in Syria and innumerable souks in medieval Islam’s great cities, Mackintosh-Smith sought clues to Ibn Battutah’s life and times, encountering the ghost of “IB” in everything from place names (in Tangier alone, a hotel, street, airport, and ferry bear IB’s name), to dietary staples to an Arabic online dating service— and introducing us to a world of unimaginable wonders. By necessity, Mackintosh-Smith’s journey may have cut some corners (“I only wish I had the odd thirty years to spare, and Ibn Battutah’s enviable knack of extracting large amounts of cash, robes and slaves from compliant rulers.”) But in this wry, evocative, and uniquely engaging travelogue, he spares no effort in giving readers an unforgettable glimpse into both the present-day and fourteenth-century Islamic worlds. (retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:57:54 -0400) The first test round has been closed. Visit the Open Shelves Classification group for details. |
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