Wild cattle, Ibn Battutah
1348 CE • Morocco
"This desert is luminous, radiant, one's chest is dialated, one is in good spirits, and it is safe from robbers. There are many wild cattle. A troop of them will apporace so near that the people can hunt them with dogs and wooden arrows. However, eating their meat produces thirst and so many people avoid it. It is remarkable that if these cattle are killed water is found in their stomachs. I have seen the Massufah squeezing the stomach and drinking the water in it. There are also many snakes in this desert."
Ibn Battutah, and Tim Mackintosh-Smith, The Travels of Ibn Battutah (London: Picador, 2003), 283.
Image: Imre Solt, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike
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