Islam & Travel in the Middle Ages

by Touati, Houari; Cochrane, Lydia G.

• ISBN13: 9780226808772
• ISBN10: 0226808777
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2010-08-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

In the Middle Ages, Muslim travelers embarked on arihla, or world tour, as surveyors, emissaries, and educators. On these journeys, voyagers not only interacted with foreign culturestouring Greek civilization, exploring the Middle East and North Africa, and seeing parts of Europethey also established both philosophical and geographic boundaries between the faithful and the heathen. These voyages thus gave the Islamic world, which at the time extended from the Maghreb to the Indus Valley, a coherent identity. Islam and Travel in the Middle Agesassesses both the religious and philosophical aspects of travel, as well as the economic and cultural conditions that made therihlapossible. Houari Touati tracks the compilers of thehadithwho culled oral traditions linked to the prophet, the linguists and lexicologists who journeyed to the desert to learn Bedouin Arabic, the geographers who mapped the Muslim world, and the students who ventured to study with holy men and scholars. Travel, with its costs, discomforts, and dangers, emerges in this study as both a means of spiritual growth and a metaphor for progress. Touati's book will interest a broad range of scholars in history, literature, and anthropology.

Author Biography

Houari Touati is a director of studies at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris.

Table of Contents

Preface to the English-Language Edition (2010)	p. vii
Acknowledgments (2000)	p. xi
Introduction	p. 1
Invitation to the Voyage	p. 11
The 'ilm, an Onomastic Emblem	p. 16
A Catastrophic Theory of Knowledge	p. 25
The Genealogical Structure of Knowledge	p. 28
The School of the Desert	p. 45
Linguists and Bedouins	p. 45
The Stay in the Desert	p. 51
A Geography of Pure Language	p. 62
A Theory of the Stay in the Desert	p. 67
The Price of Travel	p. 79
Financing a Voyage	p. 80
Paying a Personal Price	p. 90
Terminus	p. 96
Autopsy of a Gaze	p. 101
The Eye of the Popeyed Man	p. 105
A Geographer in His Study	p. 110
The Experience of the Voyage	p. 119
A Clinical Look at Muslim Verismo	p. 128
Muqaddasi, Strabo, and Greek Science	p. 142
Attaining God	p. 157
The Theory of the Errant Life	p. 158
Topographical Writing	p. 165
Sufism as a Crossing of the Desert	p. 169
The Voyage to Syria	p. 175
Entering into the Desert	p. 192
Society and Its Obverse	p. 197
Going to the Borderlands	p. 201
The Ulemas and Jihad	p. 201
An Ideology of Combat	p. 206
Jihad and Hagiography	p. 212
Writing the Voyage	p. 221
Narrating an Absence	p. 221
The Extraordinary in the Voyage	p. 227
The Travel Epistle	p. 233
An Art of Travel	p. 239
A Return to the Travel Narrative	p. 246
Conclusion: The Journey to the End of the Same	p. 257
Chronological List of Principal Travel Accounts	p. 267
Glossary	p. 269
Bibliography	p. 273
Index	p. 297
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