Medieval Muslim travelers to China

Remote and mysterious 7^th–8^th century China provided a natural source of stories that could neither be verified nor disputed. As a consequence, knowledge of China of early Arab/Islamic traders on the Silk Route was based on rather basic, mythical, information. These stories were easily categorized into the three literary genres of the time, The Rihla (travelogues); The ‘Aja’ib (miracles); and Al-Faraj ba'da a-Shidda wa-l-diq, which drew both a cultured readership and an avid oral audience. Despite the later development of historical and geographic literature, China still did not figure prominently in the 9^th – 10^th century Arab worldview, and reports tended to quote from the Rihla travelogues, like Sinbad the Sailor. It wasn’t until the travels and writings of Ibn Battuta in the 13^th century that Arab/Islamic knowledge of China was enriched and updated.