Abstract

In 851, four and a half centuries before Marco Polo, the anonymous author of a famous report on China and India (Akhbar as-Sin wal-Hind), availing himself of the information brought back by Arab merchants and sailors, gave so careful and meticulous a description of China that specialists even today find few inaccuracies. Yet the same subject is treated by most contemporary scholars with a light-hearted casualness that is confusing and disturbing.