Category Archives: Travel

Medieval Muslim Women’s Travel

Gender and Sexuality, Islamic History, Travel


Two woman observing a conversation, Baghdad, Maqamat al-Hariri, Late Eleventh to early Twelfth Centuries, Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. MS arabe 3929 fol 134, Maqamat 40, detail

Medieval Muslim Women’s Travel: Defying Distance and Dangerby Marina Tolmacheva, World History Connected

Women’s rights in Muslim societies became an especially sensitive subject of intercultural discussion in the twenty-first century. The recent Arab awakening has made understanding Islam, explaining Muslim sacred law to non-Muslims, and interpreting the internal dynamics of Islamic countries an increasingly urgent concern for educators. This paper focuses on historical evidence of Muslim women’s spatial mobility since the rise of Islam and until the early modern period, that is from the seventh until the sixteenth centuries. The Muslim accounts of travel and literature about travel created during this long period were written by men, mostly in Arabic. Muslim women did not leave behind records of their own travel, and it is only in the early modern period that some records were created by women, only a very few of which have been discovered. This means that we must rely on men’s accounts of women’s travel or draw on general descriptions of travel conditions that are applicable to women’s travel as well as men’s. Another limitation derives from the Islamic requirements of privacy and Muslim conventions of propriety: it was generally not considered good manners to discuss womenfolk or specific ladies, so medieval, and even early modern, Muslim books rarely describe living women unless it is to praise them. Historical chronicles may glorify queens, discuss important marriages made by princesses, or praise pious or learned Muslim women, but some travel books—for example, “The Book of Travels” (Safar-Nama) by the Persian traveler Nasir-i Khusraw (1004–1088)—do not speak of women at all. Some of the eyewitness evidence below explicitly related to women’s travel is drawn from the author who set the pattern of the travel account focused on pilgrimage to Mecca, Ibn Jubayr (1145–1217) and from “The Travels” (Rihla) of by Ibn Battuta (1304–1368?), who repeatedly married and divorced during his travels and sought advantage from association with prominent women met on his journeys. No such reservation was practiced in the Christian writing tradition, so occasionally observations of Muslim women on the journey may be found in the records left by European pilgrims, merchants or captives in the Near East, especially in works published after 1500. Continue reading Medieval Muslim Women’s Travel →

Return to Lebanon

Ethics, Lebanon, Poetry, Travel


Rivoli Square, Beirut, Lebanon, ca. 1960

First Impressions of Lebanon in June 2013

By George Nicolas El-Hage, Ph.D., Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature

In 2002, I published my book, The Return of the Hero and the Resurrection of the City. In this poetry book about Lebanon, I borrowed the tragic image of Virgil’s Aeneas who had left his city of Troy in ashes burning behind him as he carried his father on his shoulder and held his son’s hand and marched forward to the new world where he was destined to build Rome and establish a new world order. My saga of self-imposed exile mirrors that of Aeneas’s in many ways with one major difference: I wanted to come back to my destroyed city, to Beirut, to my Troy, in spite of the temptations of my sweet exile abroad. The burning question was: When? How long will the war last and when will peace reign again? Was I really waiting for Godot?

To have experienced life in pre-war Lebanon in the sixties and early seventies, when Lebanon was the jewel of the Mediterranean, was a time that is unforgettable. Every moment remained deeply engraved in my memory during the 37 years that I spent in the United States. I kept insisting on staying away while Lebanon kept persisting in its suicidal lifestyle torn between nationalism , Arabism, Palestinianism, Islamism, Lebanization, Westernization, globalization and many other “isms” that went on bleeding it to death and dislocating its citizens and scattering them across the globe.

Thirty-seven years later it dawned on me, what am I waiting for? Am I waiting for Lebanon to become a powerful, strong country with a stable central government? Am I waiting for all of its numerous political parties to unify under one leadership or for all of its religious factions to denounce their allegiances and pray under one dome? Am I waiting for the rest of the world and for the friendly and neighboring countries, superpowers and faraway countries to denounce their claim on Lebanon and leave it alone, independent, free and self-governed? No, my friend, this shall not come to pass. After all, when was Lebanon ever in charge of its own destiny and master of its internal affairs or its foreign policy? Continue reading Return to Lebanon →

Passing Aden in 1860

Aden, Islamophobia, Orientalism, Travel, Yemen


U.S. Powhatan, which made four trips to Japan from 1857-1860

In the mid-19th century a number of American ships sailed to and from Japan. One of these was the U.S. frigate Hartford. An account of the voyage is given by H. P. Blanchard in his A Visit to Japan in 1860, which is online at archive.org. He made a brief stop at Aden, but unfortunately reflected the ethnocentric fear of his day that falling into the hands of any of the “wild” Arabs would be instant death. It appears that most of his time was spent entertaining the ladies and listening to the military band.

Continue reading Passing Aden in 1860 →

Tahrir: Take 2

"Arab Spring", Development, Egypt, Travel

First, it was the fall of Mubarak; now comes the second act: the pending removal of President Morsi, who has managed to do more damage to the image of the Muslim Brotherhood than Nasser, Sadat or Mubarak could. The people massed peacefully in Cairo’s Tahrir Square have had enough of a candidate who pretended to be independent but over the past year has increasingly been linked to the intolerant policies of the Brotherhood. Five ministers in Morsi’s cabinet have resigned, including the Tourism Minister Hisham Zaazou, who was furious that a man linked to the tourist massacre in Luxor in 1997 that killed 62 people had been appointed as a governor in Luxor. The announcement by the army giving Morsi an ultimatum to satisfy the demands of the protesters has all but assured that he will not survive. A formal coup in unlikely, but the pressure on Morsi to resign may do the trick.

The major concern in Egypt is not about democracy but the economy, which has crashed with little prospect for recovery under Morsi. The continuing unrest, coupled with fear of the rising influence of the Muslim Brotherhood, has decimated the tourism industry, which is a major impact on the local economy. In 2008 almost 13 million tourists visited Egypt, bringing in some $11 billion to the Egyptian economy. Today hotels are near empty and tourism is virtually non existent. Conflict at the luxury Semiramis Hotel in Cairo in March caused many tour operators to cancel bookings there. When the tear gas settles, the Pyramids will still dot the horizon in Gizeh, but in all likelihood Morsi will be out of a job soon. Continue reading Tahrir: Take 2 →

Tabsir Redux: Traveling Light in Arabia

Animals, camels, Travel, Yemen

[Note: the following list of items for light camping in Arabia is provided by G. Wyman Bury for the early part of the 20th century.]

CAMP EQUIPMENT
Try to do without a tent. Arabs hate pitching tents after a long day’s march, and seldom pitch them well. They draw fire and afford no protection, while preventing your own observation; they also betray the site of your camp to bad characters and casual callers on the look out for supper.

BEDDING
Avoid Wolseley valises or anything with pleats and folds, which become the permanent abiding places of parasitic insects.
‘Blankets.’ One each for the men. A few extra for convalescents or invalided men. Two for yourself.
‘Pillows.’ Carry your spare clothes in a green canvas sack. Continue reading Tabsir Redux: Traveling Light in Arabia →