Only Seeing is Believing (and Sometimes Much More)

All travelers have a longing to see, to gawk at the new and marvelous. Throughout literary accounts of Alexander the Great as well as the personal writings of Ibn Fadlan and William of Rubruck, the importance of vision as these travelers’ primary reason to believe in the “other” and acquire information is ubiquitous. Each traveler, however, puts this knowledge to highly disparate uses.

For Alexander, seeing is a method of seeking and thus understanding the unknown. In Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, Alexander leads “his army quickly… to the land of the Brahmins, as he wished to learn from the ascetics who lived there of the land’s ancient practices” (Shahnameh, p. 611). Once he arrived, Alexander “saw their faces, heard their chants, and saw them running with naked feet, bodies, and heads; he saw that their bodies were unprovided for but their souls were filled with the fruit of knowledge…” (Shahnameh, p. 611) The repetition of Sekander’s seeing of the Brahmins emphasizes that this is his method of learning about them as he so desires—only after looking at the Brahmins does Alexander understand the richness of their souls. The portrayal of Alexander in the Epistola Alexandri ad Aristotelem is strikingly similar. When Alexander was traveling through a new land and found two old men, he asked them “whether they knew of anything worth seeing” (Epistola, p. 119). In other words, Alexander’s way of learning about a new land is by looking at its most notable components. After the men send Alexander onwards to the garden of the trees of the sun and moon, the priest there instructs Alexander and his men on how to comprehend the trees’ secret knowledge: “All of you, cast your gaze upward. Each should ponder secretly and in silence those matters concerning which he is about to seek advice” (Epistola, 121). The key to understanding is thus looking at the other, and Alexander is consistently shown searching for opportunities to do so, even in two very different literary traditions.

In Ibn Fadlan’s account, seeing is also an integral part of the journey. Knowledge gained from looking, however, is limited to proof of existence, rather than learning. After locals tell Ibn Fadlan of a giant, Ibn Fadlan is determined to see it for himself and asks the locals to show him. Ibn Fadlan finds himself “face to face with the man” and “saw that by judging the length of [his] own forearm, [the giant] was twelve cubits tall.” Yet Ibn Fadlan then simply “had the same feeling of terror as the others” and left (Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, p. 40). The strangeness of the giant is thus proven, but to Fadlan, this is frightening rather than intriguing. Similarly, after another (this time deceased) giant is described to Ibn Fadlan, he asks to be shown the giant’s skeleton as proof. “I saw his head. It was like a great beehive… I was astonished at the sight” Ibn Fadlan writes (Ibn Fadlan, p. 41). Again, Ibn Fadlan is interested in using sight for the verification of marvelous things, but that is the extent of his curiosity. 

In nearly the opposite manner, William of Rubruck actually puts the idea of the visual to use as a method of communication. Shirin Khanmohamadi’s article “The Look of Medieval Ethnography” highlights a section of Rubruck’s writings where this is particularly true. When “I had appeared before him [Mangu Chan] on the first occasion… I held the Bible in front of me” Rubruck recalls (“The Look of Medieval Ethnography, p. 101). Then, the Chan “ordered it brought to him and examined it at length” (“Medieval Ethnography”, p. 101). Unable to communicate orally with the Chan, Rubruck uses seeing as a tool of mutual understanding. This relationship continued when the Chan had the bible and breviary brought to him later to look at again “and enquired keenly what the pictures meant” (“Medieval Ethnography,” p. 101). Like Alexander, William of Rubruck understands the visual as a way to gain knowledge. But unlike Alexander and Ibn Fadlan, seeing is not one-sided on the traveler’s part, but rather a method of universal understanding between parties meeting for the first time. 

For all three travelers, the visual is inevitably central to their personal experiences. The depth of thought with which the visual is put to use, however, varies. For Ibn Fadlan, it is merely authentication of the other; for Alexander, it is a way to learn of the other; and for William of Rubruck, it forms a common language with the other. A contemporary of Rubruck’s, Roger Bacon, wrote that vision is “the flower of the whole philosophy” of human knowledge (“Medieval Ethnography,” p. 101), and it seems clear that these three travelers, even though separated by the centuries, would agree.