TY  - BOOK
AU  - Touati,Houari
AU  - Cochrane,Lydia G.
TI  - Islam and travel in the Middle Ages
SN  - 9780226808772
AV  - BP190.5.T73 T681 2010
U1  - 910.4 22
PY  - 2010///
CY  - Chicago, London
PB  - The University of Chicago Press
KW  - Travel
KW  - Religious aspects
KW  - Islam
KW  - Muslim travelers
KW  - History
KW  - To 1500
KW  - Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimages
KW  - Emigration and immigration
KW  - Travelers' writings, Arabic
KW  - Islamic Empire
KW  - History and criticism
KW  - Travel, Medieval
KW  - fast
KW  - Reise
KW  - idszbz
KW  - Wallfahrt
KW  - Reisender
KW  - Muslim
KW  - Criticism, interpretation, etc
N1  - Includes bibliographical references and index; Invitation to the voyage -- The school of the desert -- The price of travel -- Autopsy of a gaze -- Attaining God -- Going to the borderlands -- Writing the voyage
N2  - 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
ER  -