91制片厂

Traveling to foreign lands is exciting. India was a choice destination before, and certainly long after, the discovery of a sea route by the Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama in 1498. In this course, we will read the accounts of medieval and early modern visitors to South Asia. How did travelers like al-Beruni, Ibn Battuta, Abdur Razzak, Niccolao Manucci and Fran莽ois Bernier undertake arduous journeys from Persia, Morocco, Italy and France? What were their motives for travel? How did they interact with people who spoke different languages and record the intersection of gender, caste and religion in the subcontinent? We will read these writings in tandem with scholarship to see how historians engage with travel literature.