Medieval Arabic geographers of Africa defined the continent with a para- doxical mixture of fact, legend, and mystery. Some, like Ibn Batuta and al- Mas`üdï, visited different parts of Africa; others, like al-Kazwinï and al- Idrisï, synthesized the information of other voyages into their geographical work. Most were indebted to the works of the Greek geographers, some- times including Greek views of African cannibalism and savagery unques- tioningly in their own accounts; others were deeply struck by the differ- ences between African societies and their own Islamic cultures. By the end of the fourteenth century, the map of Black Africa reflected a combination of mythical and empirical knowledge or, in the words of Paulo Fernando de Moraes Farias,"the interplay of the ideological and the cognitive."

Eve M. Troutt Powell, A Different Shade of Coloni…, loc. 125