Too busy writing papers and reading actual history (as opposed to historical fiction) to really write anything here. 14th century travelogues describing Medieval sub-Saharan Africa are fascinating, but I’m writing enough about this stuff for class to want to blog about it too, and I don’t assume that most people share my interest in it anyway. I should be back in a week or two with a gargantuan review of Captain From Castile, which I’m enjoying so much that it almost feels wrong, especially at a time when there’s so much else that I should be doing.
I will, however, leave you with one fun little historical tidbit about the King’s court in Ancient Mali:
[w]henever a hero (batal) adds to the list of his exploits the king gives him a pair of wide trousers, and the greater the number of a knight’s exploits the bigger the size of his trousers.
- Levtzion, Nehemia and J.F. Hopkins, eds. Corpus of Early Arabic Sources for West African History. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981. p. 265
Proof that Medieval pageantry was just as fun all around the world as it was in Europe. Also, that this is the sort of thing I’m sifting through is proof of just how fun academia can be.
yooo this helped me sooooooooooo much