Muslim travellers : pilgrimage, migration, and the religious imagination / edited by Dale Eickelman and James Piscatori.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Eickelman, Dale F., 1942-

Piscatori, James P.

Series:

Comparative studies on Muslim societies ; 9.

Comparative studies on Muslim societies ; 9

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Travel--Religious aspects--Islam.

Travel.

Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimages.

Emigration and immigration.

Islamic countries--Emigration and immigration.

Islamic countries.

Emigration and immigration--Religious aspects--Islam.

Physical Description:

xxii, 281 pages: illustrations ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Berkeley : University of California Press, 1990.

Summary:

Focusing on travel in various Muslim societies from Malaysia to West Africa to Western Europe and covering historical periods from the first centuries of Islam to the present, the contributors to this edition investigate the role of religious doctrine in motivating travel. While pilgrimage is usually seen as travel with a uniquely religious purpose, this exploration of the role of travel in Muslim societies and in Islamic doctrine shows that other forms of travel -- for learning, visits to shrines, exile, and labour migration -- also shape the religious imagination. Conversely travel for specifically religious purposes often has equally important economic and political consequences.

The contributors also explore the transnational and local significance of pilgrimage, migration, and other forms of travel, and show how these journeys heighten a universal sense of "being Muslim" while also inspiring the redefinition of the frontiers of sect, language, territory, and nation. In this way, encounters with Muslim "others" have been as important in shaping community self-definition as encounters with European "others".

Linking pilgrimage and migration to issues such as class, ethnicity, and gender, Muslim Travellers brings together the results of recent field research and historical studies. It will be of special value to students of history and anthropology and to those in cross-disciplinary courses such as Islamic civilisation and world religions.

Contents:

1 Social theory in the study of Muslim societies / Dale F. Eickelman, James Piscatori 3

Part 1 Doctrines of travel

2 The obligation to migrate: the doctrine of hijra in Islamic law / Muhammad Khalid Masud 29

3 The search for knowledge in medieval Muslim societies: a comparative approach / Sam I. Gellens 50

Part 2 Travel accounts

4 The ambivalence of rihla: community integration and self-definition in Moroccan travel accounts, 1300-1800 / Abderrahmane El Moudden 69

5 The pilgrimage remembered: South Asian accounts of the hajj / Barbara D. Metcalf 85

Part 3 Pilgrims and migrants

6 Patterns of Muslim pilgrimage from Malaysia, 1885-1985 / Mary Byrne McDonnell 111

7 The hijra from Russia and the Balkans: the process of self-definition in the late Ottoman state / Kemal H. Karpat 131

8 Shifting centres and emergent identities: Turkey and Germany in the lives of Turkish Gastarbeiter / Ruth Mandel 153

Part 4 Saints, scholars, and travel

9 Pedigrees and paradigms: scholarly credentials among the Dyula of the northern Ivory Coast / Robert Launay 175

10 Between Cairo and the Algerian Kabylia: the Rahmaniyya tariqa, 1715-1800 / Julia A. Clancy-Smith 200

11 Saints and shrines, politics, and culture: a Morocco-Israel comparison / Alex Weingrod 217

12 Ziyaret: gender, movement, and exchange in a Turkish community / Nancy Tapper 236.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0520070194

OCLC:

21329085