It goes: When the Arabs met Europeans, they were really grossed out because they would wash their face in a bowl, rinse their mouth, and spit in it, then hand it to the next guy to do the same. Was wondering if someone could confirm/deny this, but if you confirm it, are there any other accounts along with this one? Thank ya so much.
Hey guys, thanks for your comments. I guess I didn't really mean first contact. I meant just some account of an Arab meeting a European, then writing about it.
There wasn't really a first contact event between "Arabs" or "North Africans" and "Europeans", first of all, the latter two concepts didn't really exist until centuries after there had been regular contact between all three groups.
Cultures living on the Mediterranean, like Greeks, Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans traded, fought, and otherwise mixed extensively prior to the entire Mediterranean coming under Roman rule. They may have had opinions of each others customs, but they wouldn't have put each other into "European" or "North African" boxes.
Arabs and Greeks would have interacted with each other during the existence of the Persian Empire, and then probably more extensively during the time of the Greek states that replaced it in the Middle East. The Arabs would not have conceived of the Greeks as "European".