This reminds me, of all things, of the Rihla of Ibn Battuta; the journeys of a Maliki jurist from 1325 to 1347. It's nominally a travel book, covering the breadth of the world from Tangier to China, as far south as Indonesia and as far north as Ukraine, but it's more of a memoir, driven by a never-ending job search for a place that will give him lots of women and money to practice his specific tradition of law without actually requiring much effort or getting him assassinated (harder than it sounds).
Not only does it cover almost 25 years in considerable and lengthy detail, it's also dictated to a scribe years later, not a great combination for accuracy. On top of that, there are chapters which just have to be made up or plagiarized, such as a dream vision which predicts the mystics he meets years later.
And yet... not only is there material evidence that these journeys occurred, some of his recollections are astoundingly accurate in ways we can confirm today, sometimes down to the furniture layout in a particular mosque, combined with some very detailed and accurate renditions of local customs and regulations on his travels.
This is partly to do with his natural talents and profession. Though Ibn Battuta seems to have been rather mediocre as an actual scholar or jurist, his education overwhelmingly stressed oral memorization. When he recounts a conversation with a person thousands of miles away and two decades earlier, there's good reason to think he's recalling it accurately (conditional on his not fabricating it entirely).
I do recommend reading it, and not only because of an extended episode where he becomes the chief religious officer of the Maldives and proceeds to become the dad from Footloose with more hand-chopping, gets exiled by court intrigue and popular revolt, and then seriously considers just going back with a few boats and making himself king, but either loses nerve or just can't be bothered. I cannot stress enough how hilarious this is in context.
This was bloody awesome
This reminds me, of all things, of the Rihla of Ibn Battuta; the journeys of a Maliki jurist from 1325 to 1347. It's nominally a travel book, covering the breadth of the world from Tangier to China, as far south as Indonesia and as far north as Ukraine, but it's more of a memoir, driven by a never-ending job search for a place that will give him lots of women and money to practice his specific tradition of law without actually requiring much effort or getting him assassinated (harder than it sounds).
Not only does it cover almost 25 years in considerable and lengthy detail, it's also dictated to a scribe years later, not a great combination for accuracy. On top of that, there are chapters which just have to be made up or plagiarized, such as a dream vision which predicts the mystics he meets years later.
And yet... not only is there material evidence that these journeys occurred, some of his recollections are astoundingly accurate in ways we can confirm today, sometimes down to the furniture layout in a particular mosque, combined with some very detailed and accurate renditions of local customs and regulations on his travels.
This is partly to do with his natural talents and profession. Though Ibn Battuta seems to have been rather mediocre as an actual scholar or jurist, his education overwhelmingly stressed oral memorization. When he recounts a conversation with a person thousands of miles away and two decades earlier, there's good reason to think he's recalling it accurately (conditional on his not fabricating it entirely).
I do recommend reading it, and not only because of an extended episode where he becomes the chief religious officer of the Maldives and proceeds to become the dad from Footloose with more hand-chopping, gets exiled by court intrigue and popular revolt, and then seriously considers just going back with a few boats and making himself king, but either loses nerve or just can't be bothered. I cannot stress enough how hilarious this is in context.