The Travels Of Ibn Jubayr

I discovered a dusty copy of this book in a second hand bookshop recently, and was seduced by the two foldout maps, black and white with the route marked in red. The travel of Ibn Jubayr, an 11th century Muslim pilgrim from Andalusia to Mecca and back on a circuitous route looked an excellent journey, undertaken from 1183 to 1185.

However, as I probably should have predicted, as it is the work of a pilgrim it is highly focussed on the religious aspects, and is swamped down by religious interjections and praise, and unfortunately for me was seldom focussed on the journey. There are some great descriptions of (religious) architecture, and most of the culture and lifestyle of the people he came into contact with held enough interest. There is however, no doubt this is primarily a religious record of pilgrimage, and the ritual and ceremony was too dominant for me and the long lists of Arabic names of various shrines and martyrs tombs all blur beyond meaning for me.

Who was Ibn Jubayr? The introduction tells us he was the secretary of the Moorish Governor of Granada (Spain). Following ‘the temperance of the prophet' he refused a glass of wine, and somehow upset his master, who forced ‘seven cups upon him',then in remorse awarded the clerk seven cups of golden dinars! Ibn Jubayr at once determined he would use the gold to discharge the duty of the Hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, now having the funds available to do so.

The route: From Spain to Ceuta on the North African coast, to Sardinia, to Alexandria, inland up the Nile as far as Aydhab (now abandoned and in disputed territory between Egypt and Sudan), across the Red Sea to Mecca. Several months were spent in Mecca, then on to Medina (both Saudi), across the desert under Bedouin control into the Caliphate (or Iraq) to Baghdad and Mosul, west to Nasibin in an area that is now Turkey, but at the time was under Saladin's control. Further west into Syria then into the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Acre (in Israel) to Zante (now Zakynthos in Greece) to Sicily to Ibiza and Formentera and back to Grenada. I have omitted the many towns and cities en route, which were stopovers and locations of religious significance (or at least made to be!).

Ibn Jubayr lived during an important time in history, it was a few centuries before Moorish Spain fell to the Christians; Saladin was ruling in Egypt; Northern Italy, Corsica and Sardinia consisted of the Holy Roman Empire; Constantinople was waning and new powers were arising in the East. There were some very good short interludes to the story. The arrival in Alexandria (Egypt) and dealing with the customs; the description of the water clock in a mosque in Damascus; and the descriptions of markets and trade goods, which obviously caught the interest of the Clerk.

I really can't recommend this unless you have a keen interest in Islam and the Hajj, or for the historical study of the pilgrimage itself.

3 stars for its perpetual record of this journey.