5 legendary Muslim travellers | Halal Journey Information
Muhammad Asad, Evliya Celebi, Ibn Fadlan, Ibn Battuta, Ibn Khaldun. Every determine has left a legacy whose affect is larger than the tons of of 1000’s of miles they collectively travelled, penetrating additional than geographical boundaries to surpass each time and house. Happily for us, they took the time to document their experiences in accounts which have survived and proceed to encourage, inform and educate. Right here is my listing of 5 legendary Muslim travellers:
1. “Highway to Mecca” by Muhammad Asad, also called Leopold Weiss
Muhammad Asad pictured centre circa 1927 – 1931.
The Highway to Mecca charts the epic journey to Arabia, and finally to Islam, by Austrian-Jewish journalist Leopold Weiss. In 1922, on the tender age of twenty-two, Leopold Weiss moved to stay in Palestine along with his uncle, the place he picked up work for one of the crucial prestigious newspapers in Europe. His early work researched the Zionist undertaking in Palestine, and led to him coming into shut contacts with Arabs and Muslims. It was this expertise that sparked his curiosity about Islam, finally resulting in him turning into Muslim in 1926. From this level, he selected to be often called Muhammad Asad.
Muhammad Asad’s guide, The Highway to Mecca , is arguably the best up to date Muslim journey diary. It is usually one of many only a few – and the one one on this listing – that has not wanted translation into English. Muhammad Asad’s adventurous spirit led him to go away a protracted household line of Rabbinical Jews to embrace Islam; get pleasure from private audiences with the primary king of Saudi Arabia, Ibn Saud; and function a minister for the newly-formed state of Pakistan. His account is exclusive as the one one on this listing of a revert to Islam, and one who travelled to the Muslim world within the first half of the 20th Century.
What’s notably particular about his story is that he explored Arabia earlier than the frenzy of oil and gold rendered to historical past the Arabia of outdated. Muhammad Asad immersed himself of their tradition and language, and is known for his translation of the Qur’an, ‘The Message of the Qur’an’. (That is personally certainly one of my favorite English translations of the Qur’an due to the best way Muhammad Asad superbly delivers a holistic message of the spirit of the Qur’an and what it means to be a Muslim.)
In The Highway to Mecca, Muhammad Asad shares his fascinating encounters and conversations, lots of which happened with historic titans, equivalent to Libya’s ‘Lion of the desert’ Umar al-Mukhtar. Describing when, while travelling by means of Palestine, he was stopped by a stranger and her husband, he was invited into their houses for the night time, Muhammad Asad offers us a candy style of how ‘ibn al sabeel’ (the wayfarer) was as soon as taken care of:
“ ‘Wilt thou not eat bread with us, and stay in our home in a single day?’.
They didn’t ask me who I used to be, the place I used to be going or what my enterprise was. And I stayed in a single day as their visitor…My hosts tore small items from massive, paper-thin loaves of bread with which they deftly scooped up the porridge with out ever touching it with their fingers…
After we lay right down to sleep – a few dozen folks in a single and the identical room – I gazed on the picket beams above me from which strings of dried peppers and eggplants had been hanging, on the many niches within the partitions crammed with brass and stoneware utensils, on the our bodies of sleeping women and men, and requested myself whether or not at house I may ever have felt extra at house.”
Muhammad Asad’s accomplishments are too many to call on this quick introduction, however most notably he started the primary ever translation of Sahih al Bukhari into English, and was a key contributor to the creation of newly-independent Pakistan’s ideological framework.
The story of Leopold Weiss’ journey – each interior and outer – from an Austro-Hungarian Jew, to a Muslim and nearly native Arabic-speaker, jogs my memory of this ayah within the Quran, and the potential that journey holds in reworking our worldview:
“Have they not travelled over the land in order that they could have hearts by which they could apply purpose, or ears by which they could hear?”
Surah al Hajj (The Pilgrimage), Quran 22: 46
2. Seyahatname E-book of Travels, Evliya Celebi
Photograph: Miniature portray depicting Evliya Çelebi ve Seyahatları by Şermin Ciddi.
Born in Istanbul in 1611, Evliya Celebi rose to prominence as a baby by memorising the Qur’an and performing public recitals within the chief imperial mosque, the Hagia Sofia. He got here from a prestigious household; his father served as chief goldsmith to a number of Ottoman sultans. His background, witty mind and delightful voice caught the eye of the Sultan, Murad IV, who made Evliya Celebi his companion. Celebi utilized his connections to pursue his love for journey, shunning provides of political appointments.
His playful humour is captured in his private recollections that he recorded within the ten volumes of his journey diary. At present solely parts of his diary can be found in English, such because the 2010 translation of choose excerpts of the ten volumes, ‘Extract from An Ottoman Traveller: Alternatives from the E-book of Travels of Evliya Çelebi’, Robert Dankoff and Sooyong Kim:
“God is my witness that this happened. Sooner or later we had been visitors in a sure village and the Circassian who was our host wished to do a superb deed…We had been ravenous, as if we had been launched from Ma‘noghlu’s jail, and we laid into the honey so quick that our eyes couldn’t sustain with our fingers. However the honey was filled with unusual hairs that we saved pulling out of our mouths and inserting on the unfold. ‘Eat,’ stated the Circassian. ‘This my father honey.’
Our starvation having abated, we continued to eat the honey at a slower tempo, separating out the hairs. In the meantime, Ali Can Bey, a local of Taman in Crimea, got here in. ‘What are you consuming, Evliya Efendi?’ ‘Be a part of us,’ I replied. ‘It’s a type of bushy honey. I’m wondering if it was saved in a goatskin or a sheepskin.’ Ali Can, who knew Circassian, requested our host the place the honey got here from. The Circassian broke out weeping. ‘I took from my father grave,’ he stated…”
3. Land of Darkness, Ibn Fadlan
Ibn Fadlan, wearing white, reads out the Caliph’s proclamation to King Yiltawar (generally known as Aydai Khan), who’s dressed within the black ceremonial robes. This portray is an unique positioned within the Bolgar State Historic and Architectural Museum, Russia. Photograph: Soumaya Hamdi.
Historians have lengthy sung the praises of Ahmad ibn Fadlan, the tenth century secretary who travelled as a part of a diplomatic mission despatched by the Abbasid Caliph Al Muqtadir in Baghdad. The document he saved of his journey from Baghdad to the Russian Volga area is exclusive in its account for a few causes. First, it proves Islam was practiced within the Volga area earlier than the Caliph despatched his delegation. Secondly, Ibn Fadlan wrote the one eyewitness account of a Viking chieftain burial. The Caliph’s envoy to Volga Bulgaria, a area close to the Republic of Tatarstan in Russia, had been requested by the Volga ruler King Yiltawar, who transformed to Islam in 921 AD. King Yiltawar is the ancestral father of Islam in Tatarstan, the place Tatar Muslims yearly pay homage to him for his introduction of Islam into the area.
Ibn Fadlan writes:
“We arrived on Sunday, 12 Muharram 310 (12 Might 922). The journey from Jurjaniya (present-day Turkmenistan) to the king’s nation took seventy days…we unfurled the 2 banners that we had with us, saddled the horse with the saddle which had been despatched to the king as a gift and dressed the king in black robes and a turban. Then I bought out the caliph’s letter and stated…’Peace be upon you, for in addressing myself to you I reward God, beside whom there is no such thing as a god.’…Then the interpreter continued to translate the letter for us, phrase for phrase, and once we had completed studying, they pronounced Allahu akbar! so loudly the earth shook.”
Extract from Ibn Fadlan and the Land of Darkness, Arab travellers within the far North.
Maybe extra famously, Ibn Fadlan additionally met some Viking merchants throughout his journey. His descriptions of the Vikings, about whom very restricted main written sources exist, are valued by historians and filmmakers alike:
“Daily with out fail they wash their faces and their heads with the dirtiest and filthiest water there might be…He washes and disentangles his hair, utilizing a comb, there within the basin, then he blows his nostril and spits and does each filthy factor possible within the water. When he has completed, the servant carries the bowl to the person subsequent to him.”
However, Ibn Fadlan thought-about the Rus very lovely:
“I’ve by no means seen our bodies extra excellent than theirs. They had been [tall] like palm timber. They’re honest and ruddy…Every of them carries an axe, a sword and a knife and isn’t parted from any of the arms we’ve talked about.”
Do you know?
Ibn Fadlan was portrayed by Antonio Banderas in Hollywood motion movie ‘The thirteenth Warrior’, the place he meets and fights with the Vikings.
4. The Travels of Ibn Battuta, Tim Waterproof coat-Smith
‘The Rihla’ by Ibn Battuta is likely one of the most – if not probably the most – well-known journey diaries on the earth, amongst Muslims and non-Muslims alike.
The Rihla tells the story of Ibn Battuta’s unbelievable 75 000 mile journey, who travelled from his house in Morocco throughout a lot of the Muslim world. In 1325 AD on the tender age of 21, Ibn Battuta started his travels with the intention to carry out Hajj and examine underneath the nice students in Egypt and the Hejaz. His high-quality schooling earned him respect and an viewers at many courts, and so started his fame as an adventurer. He was in some ways the primary instance of a ‘digital nomad’, fulfilling his ardour for journey and incomes a residing out of it.
Amongst his many adventures he escaped loss of life greater than as soon as, fleeing India and the despotic Sultan Muhammad ibn Tughluq solely to be shipwrecked shortly after. Fearing for his life ought to he return, Ibn Battuta as an alternative retreated to the Maldives for 2 years, the place he grew to become a qadi (decide) and married into the native ruling household.
Like most of the authors on this listing, Ibn Battuta’s accounts have supplied invaluable insights into the international locations and folks he visited throughout his travels. Two years earlier than he visited Cairo in 1326 AD, the King of Mali, Mansa Musa, handed by means of the town on his technique to full Hajj. The good King is claimed to have showered the town with acts of kindness, amongst them an enormous disbursement of gold; a lot, in actual fact, that it depressed the worth of gold proper into the subsequent century. The king’s generosity grew to become legendary and generated big curiosity into the wealthy Kingdom of Mali. After crossing the Sahara, Ibn Battuta stayed within the empire of Mali while it was at its peak, underneath Mansa Sulayman, the youthful brother of Mansa Musa. He wrote:
“There may be full safety of their nation,” he wrote. “Neither traveller nor inhabitant in it has something to concern from robbers or males of violence.”
Deservedly, Ibn Battuta is taken into account by many the best traveller of all time.
5.The Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun
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Arguably the best historiographer in historical past, Ibn Khaldun was born in modern-day Tunis in 1332 and would go on to serve rulers in Andalucia, Morocco, Tunisia, and Egypt. Like Ibn Battuta, he was given judicial obligations. He was given the celebrated function of grand decide of Cairo after his household had been tragically killed on a ship wreck on their technique to be part of him, however his distinguished place was not with out its dangers. Throughout his tenure in Cairo, he was eliminated and reappointed no fewer than 5 instances, indicating that alongside along with his genius, he was additionally thought-about a maverick. He was additionally a distinguished emissary, negotiating peace treaties with Pedro the Merciless of Castilla, and with the legendary Tamerlane on the outskirts of Damascus.
Ibn Khaldun created a whole new science and anybody who has learn his most well-known work ‘The Muqaddimah’ can clearly see from his writing that he knew he was presenting an unique concept.
Ibn Khaldun wrote of his work:
‘I tamed impolite speech. It could be stated that Refractory language turns into [in my work] amenable to the phrases I utter’.
Witty, eloquent, at instances brutal, Ibn Khaldun lambasted historians for exaggerations in historical past, criticised analysts for ‘their superficial approaches’. Nevertheless, all that is secondary to the very actual genius that explored the deep and sophisticated dynamics of societies and civilization. Ibn Khaldun explored how historical past, customs, language, geography, and lots of extra dynamics type an plain sample within the modifications that happen in mankind’s political and social organisation. In essence, Ibn Khaldun was the primary ‘philospher of historical past’ and adopted scientific approaches to historical past that had by no means existed earlier than him whereas creating new terminology that has endured to at the present time.
Although Ibn Khaldun could also be usually described as a scholar, his life can’t be described as scholarly. Throughout his in depth travels by means of North Africa, Ibn Khaldun served as a minister and advisor throughout a number of the most tumultuous durations within the dynasties that dominated the area. His life was nothing in need of a rollercoaster, worthy of its personal Netflix sequence, in the event that they ever get round to it…
This text was initially revealed in April 2021 (nevertheless it’s timeless, similar to these journey legends).
