Introduction
The word riḥla commonly means “travel” or “journey.” With its etymology going back to the camel saddle (raḥl), it originally referred to related skills, practices, and purposes before travel or journey became its primary meaning.1Netton, “Riḥla.” Arab lexicographers also give other extended meanings like the raḥl as “house” or “home,” in the sense of one’s place of settlement, which seem to have largely fallen out of usage, see e.g., “raḥal” in Ibn Manẓūr, Lisān Al-ʿArab. A set of semantically similar terms is often used interchangeably but sometimes also in comparative distinction to riḥla, most prominently among them safra (also: safar, asfār).2Cf. Matar, “Arabic Travel Writing, to 1916,” 139–140; Būlus al-Ḥalabī, Paul of Aleppo’s Journal (ed. Feodorov), 1:104–106.
In relation to literature, the term riḥla is often applied very broadly. It can be applied to virtually any type of text about travel, including biographical accounts of persons who migrated, allegorical journeys of Sufi instruction, and edifying travel stories. This broad usage reflects the colloquial meaning of riḥla. In addition to fictional and symbolic narratives, it also encompasses a range of texts arising from actual travel and mobility, including local histories and guidebooks whose compiler-authors knew the places they wrote about, as well as collections of poetry composed during the journey or at their destinations. The common fusion of literary practices and mobility will be referred to as “travel writing” for the purposes of this article, including many texts that have other titles than riḥla or safr. The practice of travel writing forms the general background from which a more specific usage of the word riḥla emerges. As a term of art, it stands for a certain form of travel narrative which is best rendered in English as the Arabic travelogue genre.
This article is concerned with travelogues and travel writing from the early modern to the Nahḍa period (late fifteenth to nineteenth centuries) and places particular focus on the eastern part of the Arabic world, the Mashreq. The broad lines of the literary history of the riḥla are comparatively well established. Existing overviews often begin with the geographic literature produced in the wake of the Arabic-Islamic expansion and Abbasid consolidation, whereas travel descriptions did not emerge as a distinct literary form until later.3Newman, “Arabic Travel Writing;” Matar, “Arabic Travel Writing, to 1916;” van Leeuwen, Hajj Travelogues; Ḥamad, Mawsūʿat al-raḥalāt al-ʿarabiyya wa-l-muʿarraba al-makhṭūṭa wa-l-maṭbūʿa. Houari Touati has laid out the correlation between travel practices and different forms of travel writing during the formative and classical periods of Arabic literature and Islamicate culture; the emergence in the twelfth century of a continuing chain of riḥla travelogues from al-Andalus and the Maghreb can accordingly be understood as the blending of concerns and techniques into a recognizable genre.4Touati, Islam & Travel; Garden, “The riḥla and Self-Reinvention of Abū Bakr Ibn al-ʿArabī.”
Interestingly, the production of comparable riḥla narratives in the Mashreq seems to only have begun several centuries later,5Elger, “Arabic Travelogues from the Mashrek 1700–1834;” Kilpatrick, “Between Ibn Baṭṭūṭa and Al-Ṭahṭāwī.” in the course of the fifteenth century, but producing from that point on a remarkably varied body of literature. Meanwhile, Arabic travelogues written by Christian authors during the early modern period initially drew from a different, Greek-inspired repertoire rooted in sacred topography. Firmly linked to communal concerns, the Christian texts followed a largely separate path of development during the early modern period that would only later come into closer alignment with the Muslim tradition. Overall, the generic configurations involving Arabic travel writing and travelogues were fluid rather than fixed, and the riḥla continued to evolve throughout the early modern period in the Maghreb and the Mashreq alike, even before the larger transformations of the Nahḍa era fused communal particularities into novel concerns, thereby restructuring the literary field and the riḥla with it.
The aim of this article is to propose a sketch of the riḥla as a genre that accounts for its main features over several centuries: the historical contingency of the genre’s formation and the regional specificity of its evolution; its diversity and variety in form and content; the embeddedness of travel writing amidst other practices and literary forms; and the confessional dimension of early modern literature.
Corpus
In addition to passing references, this article draws its main examples from a corpus of primarily early modern travel writing from the Mashreq. Readers looking for systematic or more exhaustive overviews will find useful surveys and typologies in the references. General preference was given to examples from manuscript sources with notable potential for future research. The choice of texts and passages also reflects a particular interest in the treatment of pilgrimage (ḥajj, ʿumra, and ziyāra), just as the preponderance of authors from the Levant will become apparent.
The two points that this selection seeks to illustrate concern, first, the diversity of Arabic travel writing during the early modern period, and second, the confessional contours of this body of literature. Both points are questions of prime importance for the genre conception suggested below. The examples drawn from these texts display a wide range of styles and registers, including rhyming prose with poetic interludes as well as plain prose in Middle Arabic.
Among the main examples discussed below, the earliest text is an anonymous travel description by a Muslim scholar that can be dated to the ḥajj season of 1481 (886 AH). By contrast, the first originally Christian Arabic travelogue, attributed to Yūḥannā b. ʿĪsā ʿUwaysat (d. ca. 1663), relates to a pilgrimage in 1637. By that time, travel writing by Muslim authors in the Mashreq had already produced a series of elaborate riḥla compositions, among which the Istanbul journey of Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 1061/1651) in 1623 may be regarded as a mature example. A pair of later travelogues, which again juxtapose authors from different confessional backgrounds, originated in mid-eighteenth-century Syria: Ilyās Ghaḍbān (fl. 1755) and Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī (d. 1162/1749). The final set of exemplary texts take us deep into the Nahḍa period, for which the extensive literary history of Jurjī Zaydān (d. 1914), read together with a short travel text of his own, offer insights into the changed position and composition of the riḥla genre in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Historical Semantics and Contextual Analysis
Apart from Ibn Faḍlān’s seemingly isolated report during the tenth century, the beginnings of the Arabic travelogue in the East lie in the fifteenth century. The term riḥla had already appeared in the titles of several works containing journey segments or some element of travel, and examples of the Maghrebi travelogue tradition likewise used this term. Entries in biographical works (tarājim) do not always allow a clear distinction between travel activity and actual works of travel writing. Nevertheless, the repeated mentions of riḥla in the literature illustrate the continued alignment of scholarship and travel, including at least one fifteenth-century instance in which riḥla designates a travel book.6An illustrative case can be found in the Ibn Fahd family, who established themselves as a scholarly dynasty in Mecca during the ninth–tenth/fifteenth–sixteenth centuries. Its members were engaged over several generations in the interconnected pursuits of collecting hadith transmission, copying books, and historiography, all of which were augmented through personal journeys along the route of the ḥajj caravan between Syria and the Hejaz, see Bauden, “Forging a Scholarly Dynasty.” Their historiographical enterprise, for example, was initiated by Najm al-Dīn ʿUmar ibn Fahd (d. 886/1481). At least one member, Ḥāfiẓ al-Dīn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Fahd (d. 921/1515), had a monographic riḥla text to his name (lahu riḥla fī mujallad), see his biography in al-Ghazzī, al-Kawākib al-sāʾira bi-aʿyān al-miʾa al-ʿāshira, 1: 239–40. The oldest extant travel description from the early modern Mashreq is an anonymous text describing its narrator’s arrival in the Hejaz, the ḥajj of 886/1481, and the pilgrim’s subsequent settling in Damascus.7MS Damascus, Ẓāhiriyya 3230. The manuscript copy is missing the first few folios and its title. Among its many intertextual connections are frequent quotes from the riḥla by Ibn Jubayr, a twelfth-century author from Valencia, thereby attesting to the circulation of the term and the genre in the Arab East during the late Mamluk period. However, the anonymous travelogue does not seem to be modeled on Ibn Jubayr’s work; it follows its own organization and mode of compilation. The anonymous account displays its author’s command of Shafiite law, Mamluk era poetry, as well as a firm doctrinal support of the cult of saints. It concludes with a homily to a high-ranking judge in Damascus, indicating the importance of patronage in the context of scholarly travel and migration.
Seventeenth Century: Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī and Yūḥannā b. ʿĪsā ʿUwaysat
Literary patronage adapted to the the new circumstances after the Ottoman conquest of the Mamluk domains. The authority excercised by the now distant capital over provincial positions and resources prompted a series of career journeys to Istanbul during the earlier phases of the Ottoman dominion over the Mashreq, many of which also gave rise to literary accounts.8Elger, Glaube, Skepsis, Poesie; Alrawadieh, “al-Riḥla ilā l-Qusṭanṭiniyya.” A mature example of these travelogues, which blends a wide range of adab compilations with self-promotion and storytelling, is the riḥla by Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 1061/1651). Its introduction details the reason for a trip to the Sultanic capital in 1032/1623.9MS Aleppo, Waqfiyya 180; Kami, “A Damascene Shāfiʿī Professor-Mufti in Istanbul.” The narrator announces the appearance in Damascus of a professional rival who disrupts the peaceful life he had been enjoying as a law professor.
حتى رمانا الله بقسوة رجل يدعى العلم واخلاقه تباينه * وطالما يخالف باطنه * وظفر ببرآة تدريس الشامية لعلها متعله * ظهرت مباشرة بعض الاعداء الجهلا * اظهرها لقاضى قضاه دمشق * ابرهيم افندى ابن الجاوش على حين غفله * فنفذ بها له من غير نزول بمهره * مبادرا شعب لاخذ التقرير * وقبض على ما وقع فى فكه قبض السنانير * والمهر الجامع اذا وقع الصيد في فكه * لا يتركه الا بضرب خنكه او فكه * (…) (ق ٢/ب) * فلزم من ذلك ان ازعجنا عن دمشق بمحرك قهره * قاصدين بلاد الروم بجاذب قسره *
Until God struck me with the hardship of a man claiming knowledge in contrast to his core * and who so often revealed a conscience we deplore * He secured a Berat for teaching at the Shāmiyya Madrasa that was perhaps defective * and soon some ignorant foe offered to become effective * showing it to the chief Qadi of Damascus * Ibrāhīm Afandī ibn al-Jāwūsh who knew nothing of the matter * and in turn enforced the entitlement letter * challenging people to accept it like that * so that (al-Maydānī) snatched what lay before him like a cat * The large prize, then, fell prey to his claws * and he would not release it unless beaten on the neck or his jaws * (…) And just like that we were fed up with Damascus, and spurred on by spite * we travelled to Istanbul with the defeat of the foe in clear sight.10MS Aleppo, Waqfiyya 180, 2r–2v.
After employing an entertaining and perhaps satirical tone in the introduction, the account of his trip to the Ottoman capital that follows features many poetic asides. In Constantinople, Najm al-Dīn sought high-level government support in the rivalry over teaching positions in Damascus, which he framed as the struggle for victory of the pious over the corrupt. At several points in the manuscript, Najm al-Dīn refers to an Istanbul travelogue written by his father, Badr al-Dīn al-Ghazzī (d. 984/1577), almost a hundred years earlier (1530-31). Badr al-Dīn’s riḥla was among the earliest literary accounts of journeys to Istanbul by career-minded Sunni scholars from Syria, a tradition that continued well into the seventeenth century and reflects an environment that valued travel writing as an artistic and philosophical exercise.11Elger, Glaube, Skepsis, Poesie; Pfeifer, Empire of Salons. The recently edited travelogue Zubdat al-āthār by Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Sukaykir (d. 987/1579) exemplifies well the belletristic ambition in texts representing career journeys. In contrast, the nominal ḥajj travelogue of his friend Hujayj al-Waḥīdī (fl. 992/1584) illustrates the form’s versatility by unfolding an encyclopedic display of erudition across literary, scientific, and religious fields of knowledge, Sukaykir, Zubdat al-āthār; MS St. Petersburg, Asiatic Museum 607; Rosen, Notices sommaires des manuscrits arabes du musée asiatique, 190–196.
The first example of an original Christian Arabic travelogue appeared 150 years after the ḥajj riḥla discussed above. The anonymous report of a pilgrimage from Damascus to St. Catherine Monastery and Jerusalem in 1637 has been convincingly attributed to Yūḥannā b. ʿĪsā ʿUwaysat, an Orthodox priest, poet, and scribe who died around 1663.12MS Balamand 181/17; Walbiner, “Ein christlich-arabischer Bericht über eine Pilgerfahrt von Damaskus zum Berge Sinai in den Jahren 1635/36 (Hs. Balamand 181).” Slim, “Yūḥannā Ibn ʿĪsā ʿUwaysāt.” The style, register, and narrative objectives of the report appear decidedly different from, for instance, Najm al-Dīn’s riḥla. Whereas the latter’s profile was characterized by frequent poetic interludes and intertextual references to a larger literary tradition, including travelogues, ʿUwaysat’s report is written in straightforward prose and lays out an ostensibly self-contained narrative.
كان وصولنا اليها يوم الخميس باكر جمعة الشعانين * ونزلنا في دير القديس مار نقولا * المعروف بديرالزنكل * نزلنا في قلاية العم الخوري يعقوب النقاش * وكان هو والشقيقه مجاور في القدس ولقينا جا من الشام * زوا(ر) واناس منكثرة * ومن جميع البلاد * ونهار سبت العازر زرنا العازريه * وقدسنا في طور الزيتون * وجينا العصر دخلناالقيامة المقدسَة * وعملنا الاغربنيا * وقدسَنا تاني يوم صحبة الاب المطران اتاناسَي * مطران بيت لحم * وكان مطران غزه * ومطران امد وزرنا القبر المقدس * فايض الحيَاه * والجلجله المقدسه * ومغارت الصليب * وبقية الاثاراة
Our arrival (in Jerusalem) was on the Thursday before Palm Friday * We stayed in the monastery of Mār Nīqūlā * which is known as the Zinkul monastery * We lodged in the cell of the uncle, the priest Yaʿqūb al-Naqqāsh * He and the sister (al-shaqīqa) were neighbors in Jerusalem * We saw many pilgrims and people coming from Damascus * and from everywhere else * On Lazarus Saturday we visited al-ʿĀzāriya * and celebrated mass on the Mount of Olives * In the afternoon we went to enter the Holy Sepulcher * prayed the nightly liturgy * We celebrated mass on a second day in the company of Bishop Atānāsā * the bishop of Bethlehem * who had been the bishop of Gaza * and Āmid, and we visited the Holy Grave * the life-giving * and the holy Golgotha * and the Grotto of the Cross * and the other relics *13MS Balamand 181/17, 124v–125r.
In terms of literary tradition, the report’s likely relatives and predecessors appear to lie in the Arabic translations of Greek guidebooks since the sixteenth century rather than the travel books of fellow Muslim countrymen, to which it exhibits only limited similarity and has no obvious relation. The confessional particularity of Arabic travel writing in the East seems quite pronounced in this context, particularly because several other Christian riḥla texts emerged from church missions and served communal purposes. Most prominent among them are the journal of Paul of Aleppo (d. 1669) documenting his father’s patriarchal missions to, inter alia, Moscow, and the far-roaming journeys of Elias of Babylon (d. ca. 1700) through Catholic Europe and the Americas.14Feodorov, “Paul of Aleppo;” Būlus al-Ḥalabī, Paul of Aleppo’s Journal (ed. Feodorov); Ghobrial, “The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory.” See also Krimsti, “Arsāniyūs Shukrī al-Ḥakīm’s Account of His Journey to France, the Iberian Peninsula, and Italy (1748–1757).”
Eighteenth Century: Ilyās Ghaḍbān and Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī
The next set of examples takes us into the mid-eighteenth century and juxtaposes two travelogues that focus on pilgrimage and visitation. Perhaps somewhat surprisingly, pilgrimage was a marginal topic in most earlier travel writing, as Muslim authors favored diversity even in accounts of journeys undertaken for ḥajj and ziyāra. In contrast, Christian authors produced some long travel narratives but only brief descriptions of pilgrimage. That changed over the course of the later seventeenth century, when pilgrimage and visitation emerged as central motives in many travelogues and related literature. Ilyās Ghaḍbān (fl. 1755), for instance, was a wealthy merchant from Aleppo’s Melkite community. His two-part report includes a journaled itinerary to and from Palestine and Jerusalem, as well as a detailed description (bayān) of the pilgrimage sites that the author visited.15MS Beirut, USJ Arabe 34. The quote below is from the latter part and concerns a visitation in Bethlehem.
بيان ذكر الزيارات (…)
ذكر الزيارات المُغفَّرة
اولًا الاماكن التى فى بيت لحم الفايقة الشرف حيث ولد الرب الاله (…)
مغارة الحليب حيث والدة الاله كانت هناك مع ولدها القدوس وفيها ظهر الملك يوسف فى الحلم وقال له قم خد الصبى وامه واهرب الى مصر كما يخبر الانجيلى * وقدكانت هذه المغارة كنيسة * وقد تشرفت ايضًا بمكث سيدتنا مريم العذرا بها ليلة الميلاد الي ان تهيت لهم المغاره والمدود * وزرتها برفقة اثنى عشر بادرى وقرأوا الانجيل المقدس وطلبة العذرا * وهذه المغاره يُنزل اليها بتسعة درجات وهي مغارة داخل معاره واخذت من اتارتها * وهى غفران كامل
EXPLANATION OF THE RECORD OF VISITATIONS […]16MS Beirut, USJ Arabe 34, 8v.
RECORD OF THE MERCIFUL VISITATIONS
First, the sites in noble Bethlehem, where our divine Lord was born.17MS Beirut, USJ Arabe 34, 9r. […]
The Milk Grotto, where the mother of God was together with her holy son and where the angel appeared to Joseph in his dream and said go and take the mother and the child and flee to Egypt, according to the gospel. The grotto used to be a church. It has also been blessed by the presence of our Lady Mary the Virgin who stayed there during the night of birth until the grotto provided them with the Crib (midwad). I visited (the grotto) in the company of twelve padres (bādirī). They read the holy Evangelium and the Litany of the Virgin. One descends to this grotto over nine steps. It is a grotto inside of a grotto. I took some of its remnants (akhadhtu min atāratihā). It is a full remission (ghufrān kāmil).18MS Beirut, USJ Arabe 34, 11r.
Compared to the free-flowing observations of other Christian Arabic accounts from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,19Būlus al-Ḥalabī, Paul of Aleppo’s Journal (ed. Feodorov); Ghobrial, “The Secret Life of Elias of Babylon and the Uses of Global Microhistory;” Diyāb, The Book of Travels (ed. Stephan, trans. Muhanna). the terseness and impartiality of this composition speak against reading the riḥla as a record of Ghaḍbān’s subjective experience. Notable elements are the orderly arrangement of the narrative and the fact that each site description (mazār) concludes by highlighting the exculpatory value (ghufrān, indulgence, remission) of the visitation, namely either “complete” (ghufrān kāmil), or “seven years” (ghufrān sabaʿ sinīn). What stands out from this form of travel writing, therefore, is the image of a sacred landscape shaped by a conceptual order that was specifically Catholic.
A few years earlier, between 1747 and 1749, the Damascene Khalwatī shaykh Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī (1099–1162/1688–1749) undertook what was to be the last in a long series of literary travel accounts.20Elger, “Al-Bakrī, Muṣṭafā Kamāl al-Dīn;” al-Bakrī al-Ṣiddīqī, al-Khamrah al-maḥsiyya fī al-riḥlah al-qudsiyyah (ed. Badawī); Bentlage, “Muṣṭafā Al-Bakrī’s Jerusalem Journey and the Early Modern Arabic Travelogue.” This final journey began in Jerusalem with the aim of reaching Cairo. His extended stay in Egypt also entailed a trip to the shrine of Saint Badawī in Tanta and a ḥajj to Mecca and Medina. As he had done for each of his previous fourteen journeys, al-Bakrī had begun to compose a travelogue about his last trip. However, he died in Cairo on his way back from the Hejaz, leaving the work unfinished. The extant text revolves largely around visits to shrines in Cairo, Tanta, and elsewhere along the route, and is interspersed with poems he composed in response to those visits.21MS Jerusalem, National Library AP Ar. 572/9. The movement along that road and between the shrinescapes of the Levant and Arabia is presented not so much as a direct function of the sites and their religious significance than as a personal and charismatic connection to the mystical realm. This connection becomes accessible to subjective experience through disciplined practice, the cultivation of sensibilities, and interactions with persons and places blessed by divine grace. Dreams play a pivotal role in the narrative presentation of that connection. Bakrī’s entire journey is prompted by the dreams of distant friends. Another significant episode of the unfinished travelogue concerns a travel companion’s vision of the Prophet. The episode takes place during a gathering with Sufis from another brotherhood. There Bakrī tells the Aḥmadiyya shaykh about an earlier dream of ʿAlyān, an ecstatic Sufi (majdhūb). Bakrī had recorded ʿAlyān’s vision in prose and verse and the travelogue quotes the dream report in full: ʿAlyān is approached by a young boy delivering an invitation to see someone. The boy guides him to the home of the Prophet, presumably the Sacred Chamber in Medina, where the Prophet is sitting next to another person. ʿAlyān recognized that person and reportedly said to Bakrī:
(ق ٣٤/ب، ٣٣) ورايتك جالسا علي يمين الاعلا وهو يخاطبك بلطف وحنان * ويقول لك يا مصطفى هذه دار سكني في غابر الزمان * وهبتك بها لتسكن فيها بالاهل والوالدان * ترضى قال فطاطآت تقبل الايدي والاقدام بذله مهان ولهان * وقد ابحتك سكنها باهلك عن اذن الرحيم الرحمن * قال الرايّ ثم اني دخلت باستكان * وقبلت القدم المقدم علي اهل الاكوان * ورجعت القهقري بادب (…) *
“I saw you sitting on the right side of the Prophet who was talking to you with grace and affection * He said: ‘Muṣṭafā, this is my residential home, which I gift it to you and your family to dwell in perfection’ * You inclined your head to kiss his hands and feet in passionate love and humility * as you had just been given (Fāṭima’s) house by decree of the divinity * The dreamer said: ‘I entered with deference (bi-stikān) * and kissed the supreme foot of absolute precedence * and withdrew backwards in well-mannered retreat (al-qahqarī bi-adab…)’.”22MS Jerusalem, National Library AP Ar. 572/9, 34v–35r.
In the travelogue, this vision features as part of the exchange with the suitably impressed Aḥmadiyya shaykh, who immediately asked for a copy of the report because of its spiritual value (imdādāt). Such riḥla texts centering on pilgrimage and with a pronounced Sufi streak had existed long before the widely known travelogues of Bakrī’s teacher, ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1143/1731).23Demiri and Pagani, “Introduction: ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī and the Intellectual and Religious History of the 17th–18th-Century World of Islam;” Bentlage, “al-Ḥaḍra al-unsiyya fī l-riḥla al-qudsiyya: The Intimate Presence on the Jerusalem Journey.” However, even among the next generation of travel writers with a direct connection to al-Nābulusī, we find a variety of travelogues exhibiting distinct profiles.24In addition to Bakrī’s series of riḥla texts, the travelogue of Aḥmad al-Adhamī (d. 1159/1746) leaned heavily toward belletristic literature, whereas Muṣṭafā al-Luqaymi’s travelogue (d.1173/1759-60) combined storytelling with curious asides and beautiful poetry, see MS Cairo, Dār al-Kutub adāb 4860; meanwhile, Ḥusayn al-Baytimānī (d. 1175/1761) chose the guise of a travelogue as a narrative framework for his Sufi manual, see MS Princeton 499:3, Yahuda no. 2874.
Riḥla in the Writings of Jurjī Zaydān
Our final set of examples brings us to the print culture of the Nahḍa period. A joint examination of two texts by Jurjī Zaydān (1861-1914) offers insight into the place and shape of travel writing in modern Arabic literature. His comprehensive history of Arabic literature in four volumes appeared between 1884 and 1914 and covered one and a half millennia of Arabic scholarship and belles-lettres divided into ten periods.25Zaydān, Taʾrīkh ādāb al-lugha al-ʿarabiyya, vol. 4. In addition, his Journey to Europe in 1912 (Riḥla ilā Ūrūbā 1912) was published posthumously in 1923.26Zaydān, Riḥla ilā Urūbbā 1912. Read together, the two texts suggest that Zaydān had some knowledge of, but little regard for, the past few hundred years of Arabic travel writing and its literary forms. Using riḥla indiscriminately for both the journeys and the related literary corpus, he prized empirical experience and the novelty of explorative journeys while disparaging stylistic embellishment. Zaydān accorded informational value to travel and comparative observations primarily as part of the modernist endeavor to shape the social foundations of a literary revival. By contrast, the genre characteristics of early modern riḥla did not impress the nationalist historian.
Conclusion
In light of these examples, I propose a definition of the genre that leaves room for diversity. This enables synchronic as well as diachronic comparison and thereby renders riḥla a meaningful term in literary history. Such a definition, as the analysis implies, does not suggest that riḥla should be interpreted in the same way wherever the word is used or appears in a book title; in fact, it encompasses many books that do not bear this word in their title. Rather, the proposed definition is a formal one that seeks to contribute to a literary history attentive to difference, change, and transformation.27For a description of genre in terms of pathsetting innovation and ideal-type exposition of characteristics, see, e.g., Netton, “Riḥla.” For a discussion of “intra-generic coherence” that starts from the problem of corpus delineation rather than famous exponents, see van Leeuwen, Hajj Travelogues, 22–33, 48–53.
My working definition of riḥla as a literary genre therefore rests on a double distinction. First, as mentioned in the introduction, I propose distinguishing between the general practice of travel writing and the more concrete form of riḥla travelogues, the latter being structured around a specific journey. The phrase “structured around” reflects the second distinction, namely the distinction between content and narrative framework. This distinction is particularly important for works of pre-modern Arabic literature, in which compilation was the norm and perhaps the ideal mode of literary production. This gave travelogues the capacity for incorporating a vast array of forms into their narrative flow, allowing them to accommodate a wide variety of content. The narrative framework, on the other hand, refers to the structure of the literary work as a whole.28Frow, Genre, 29–50.
The minimal definition of the riḥla’s narrative framework requires, first, that the text begins with the journey itself; second, that it concludes more or less with the end of the journey or its aftermath; and, third, that the intervening narrative is structured in some way around the journey or journeys. That structuring does not need to mirror the course and sequence of a journey, as illustrated in ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī’s travelogues, nor is the content it organizes predetermined; rather, it remains authorial choice and experimentation. For example, the inclusion of compiled material about the places described in a specific riḥla can seriously blur the distinction between factual and fictional, rendering the text a narrative survey of the known and imagined world rather than an empirical account of an actual journey.29Beckingham, “The Riḥla.” As the rich and varied topical mix in many travelogues makes clear, the riḥla genre is as much an exercise in erudition and refinement (adab) as it is an account of travel.
Such a bookend-style view of the riḥla, which treats this genre first and foremost as a strategy of textual organization, does not itself seek to capture the rich texture of Arabic travelogues. What it does achieve, however, is establish a formal definition that encompasses a wide array of literary works spanning several centuries. Distinguishing narrative framework from content provides a basis for comparing and highlighting the diversity of Arabic travelogues as texts compiled from a variety of literary material in which various forms of writing are used, combined, and developed.
This conceptual framework also establishes a commonality between texts by Christian authors and those by writers in the Muslim tradition despite marked differences in their stylistic profile, literary traditions, and communal concerns. The commonality claimed here does not imply that Christian and Muslim travel writers shared a discursive space or imagined themselves to be engaged in the same endeavor. Such close cohesion is found in the early modern period only among Syrian Sunni authors from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, whose mutual awareness, references, and responses are well documented. In a strictly synchronic view, Christian and Muslim authors were largely operating in separate literary spheres and almost exclusively among each other for most of the period under study. The commonality that a largely formal definition of the riḥla genre proposes lies in the similarity of its underlying principles. Putting aside differences in register, communal orientation, among other features, Ilyās Ghaḍbān and shaykh Muṣṭafā al-Bakrī were both producing Arabic narratives that were occasioned by and structured around the journeys they undertook, as was Najm al-Dīn al-Ghazzī.30Or, in the nineteenth-twentieth centuries, Rifāʿa Rāfiʿ Ṭaḥṭāwī (d. 1873) and Bint al-Shāṭiʾ (d. 1998) and many other modern travel writers, see van Leeuwen, “In the ‘Land of Wonders’;” Ṭahṭāwī, Takhlīṣ al-ibrīz fī talkhīṣ Bārīz.
The merit of approaching the material through this commonality becomes apparent particularly in period-spanning and comparative inquiries. This formal understanding of the riḥla invites further and perhaps more focused explorations of the diversity and finer dynamics of Arabic literature, for example through a morphology of styles and motifs. It should be complemented by research into the social and cultural underpinnings of travel writing in general and the riḥla travelogue genre in particular. As emphasized, for example, in Zaydān’s work, these extra-literary aspects are likewise relevant for understanding the confessional distinctiveness of early modern literature.
