Considering the Evidence: Travelers’ Tales and Observations

Xuanzang’s visit to India presented him with a firsthand feel of a whole new culture and religious practices. Xuanzang was very overwhelmed with the upright and honorable traits of the ordinary people. However, the caste system might very well have seemed to be the most surprising to him as a visitor from China. Moreover, he accurately described how the legal processes and the modes of punishment deployed in India were strange and surprising.
The city covered a huge area, and it possessed several impressive features. It is clear from the text that the features included 12,000 bridges of stone; twelve guilds, each with enormous numbers of employees and wealthy masters. Moreover, the majority of the merchants were wealthy, and the number of beautiful palaces and impressive mansions warranted Marco Polo’s christening of the city as “the finest and the noblest in the world.” The city had everything considered great and noble with it from the large amounts of silk to traders and the ten principal markets. Indeed, the city lived up to the description Marco Polo awarded it.
Batuta’s encounter in Mali strikes both impression and shock to him. Clearly, the women’s interaction with men in both public and private, as well as their extreme lack of clothing were amongst the shocking experiences in his account. Moreover, Batuta was shocked by the people’s practices during the ceremony and their favorite meals at these ceremonies. The local people found delicacy in dogs, asses, and carrion which were all a shock to him.

However, he was impressed by the good Islamic practices by the local Muslims together with the people’s integrity and the transparency of the kingdom’s justice system. Moreover, the seriousness in which the prayer Fridays were handled by the locals was quite impressive to him as well.
Experts and historians could derive the seriousness in the practice of the Islam religion in Mali. Moreover, the number of religious scholars Batuta interacted with in Mali is a clear indication that the Islam culture was well absorbed in the Kingdom. Elements of continuing the West African tradition includes the fashion sense and the demeanor of the women; the gender inequality and the custom traditional rituals that they performed to protect them from evil. This shows that however much they were in the Islam faith, most of the African beliefs were still intact in the traditional culture. The poetry recited by the well-dressed poets during feast days as well ensures the continuity of the West African culture.
Due to the ease of transport of goods between Africa and Eurasia, the regions have become more of a single interaction zone. Nevertheless, an individual trader does not have the capacity to move goods across such long distances on the sea and land. Moreover, the two regions have very different cultures and levels of civilization during to their differing level of interaction with the West.
There are several differences between the cross-cultural interactions of the third-wave and those of the earlier wave. For instance, the there magnitude of indirect connections in the third-wave was greater than in the periods before. Connection improved because, with innovations in transport and communication, more ground could be covered in a shorter time. As a result of the increased interaction, trade and commerce became popular economic activities in more regions that it had been before. Moreover, the Islamic and Buddhist ideals spread across the land such that people who practiced other religions converted into Muslims and Buddhists. It was during the third-wave, unlike before, that the Sand Roads gained popularity as the major trade route.