Islam & travel in the Middle Ages
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Islam & travel in the Middle Ages
University of Chicago Press, 2010
- : cloth
- Other Title
-
Islam et voyage au Moyen Âge : histoire et anthropologie d'une pratique lettrée
Islam and travel in the Middle Ages
Available at 5 libraries
  Aomori
  Iwate
  Miyagi
  Akita
  Yamagata
  Fukushima
  Ibaraki
  Tochigi
  Gunma
  Saitama
  Chiba
  Tokyo
  Kanagawa
  Niigata
  Toyama
  Ishikawa
  Fukui
  Yamanashi
  Nagano
  Gifu
  Shizuoka
  Aichi
  Mie
  Shiga
  Kyoto
  Osaka
  Hyogo
  Nara
  Wakayama
  Tottori
  Shimane
  Okayama
  Hiroshima
  Yamaguchi
  Tokushima
  Kagawa
  Ehime
  Kochi
  Fukuoka
  Saga
  Nagasaki
  Kumamoto
  Oita
  Miyazaki
  Kagoshima
  Okinawa
  Korea
  China
  Thailand
  United Kingdom
  Germany
  Switzerland
  France
  Belgium
  Netherlands
  Sweden
  Norway
  United States of America
Note
Bibliography: p. [273]-296
Includes index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
In the Middle Ages, Muslim travelers embarked on a rihla, or world tour, as surveyors, emissaries, and educators. On these journeys, voyagers not only interacted with foreign cultures - touring Greek civilization, exploring the Middle East and North Africa, and seeing parts of Europe - they 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 Ages" assesses both the religious and philosophical aspects of travel, as well as the economic and cultural conditions that made the rihla possible. Houari Touati tracks the compilers of the hadith, who 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.
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