A Daily Ritual
a quiet space for daily reflection.
Sketch a thought, or just read the quote. Either way, a moment of stillness.
Rumi · Marcus Aurelius · Emily Dickinson
Ibn Battuta · Iqbal · & others
The heart that has known many lands is never a small heart.
Ibn Battuta · Rihla · 1325
· read
The heart that has known many lands is never a small heart.
Ibn Battuta · Rihla · 1325
a reflection
Ibn Battuta's view of the world expanded dramatically over his travels: he went from a young man with a fairly conventional North African education to someone who had eaten in homes from Mali to China, prayed alongside Muslims of wildly different customs, and served rulers whose courts looked nothing like anything he grew up with. His heart, in a sense, got bigger by being stretched. Think of someone in your life whose experiences are very different from yours, a coworker from another country, an older relative, a friend with a different faith or background. Today, ask them one real question about their life, something you have been curious about but never asked. Listen to the answer without immediately relating it back to your own experience. Let your sense of what is normal get a little bigger.
about the author
Ibn Battuta, 1304 to 1368
Ibn Battuta left his hometown of Tangier at twenty-one years old, intending only to perform the Hajj. He did not return for twenty-four years. By the time he came home, he had covered approximately 75,000 miles across three continents, visiting the courts of sultans in Mali and India, walking the steppes of the Golden Horde, sailing to the Swahili coast, and crossing the width of Asia twice over. No traveler of his era came close to matching that distance. His account, known as the Rihla, was dictated in collaboration with a scholar named Ibn Juzayy and became one of the most vivid records of the medieval world we have. What makes him singular is not just the distance but the quality of his attention. He noticed how people ate, how they mourned, what they wore, how they governed, what they found funny. He was a legal scholar by training, not a merchant or an explorer in the modern sense. He moved through the world because movement was itself a form of learning he could not give up.
The Rihla (A Gift to Those Who Contemplate the Wonders of Cities and the Marvels of Travelling), c. 1355
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