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Pilgrimage, travel for learning, visits to shrines, exile, and labour migration shape the religious imagination and in turn are shaped by it. Some travel, such as pilgrimage, explicitly intended for religious purposes, has equally important economic and political consequences. Other travel, not primarily motivated by religious concerns and thus neglected by many scholars, nonetheless profoundly influences religious symbols, metaphors, practices and senses of community. These studies, encompassing Muslim societies from Malaysia to West Africa, also suggest how encounters with Muslim `others' have been as important in shaping community self-definition as encounters with European 'others'.
This volume brings together historians, social scientists and jurists concerned with pilgrimage, scholarly travel and migration in both medieval and contemporary Muslim societies and explores basic issues. Can 'Muslim travel' be regarded as a distinct form of social action? What role does religious doctrine play in motivating travel and how do doctrinal interpretations differ across time and place? What are the strengths and limitations of various approaches to understanding the transnational and local significance of pilgrimage, migration and other forms of travel? An image of Muslim tradition and change in local communities in relation to travel emerges, which competes with the myth of the universality of the Islamic community.
List of contents
Introduction 1. Social Theory in the Study of Muslim Societies Dale F. Eickelman and James Piscatori Part I: Doctrines of Travel 2. The Obligation to Emigrate: The Doctrine of Hijra in Islamic Law Muhammad Khalid Masud 3. The Search for Knowledge in Medieval Muslim Societies: A Comparative Approach Sam I. Gellens Part II: Travel Accounts 4. The Ambivalence of Rihla : Community Integration and Self-definition in Moroccan Travel Accounts, 1300-1800 Abderrahmane El Moudden 5. The Pilgrimage Remembered: South Asian Accounts of the Hajj Barbara D. Metcalf Part III: Pilgrims and Migrants 6. Patterns of Muslim Pilgrimage from Malaysia, 1885-1985 Mary Byrne McDonnell 7. The Hijra from Russia and the Balkans: The Process of Self-definition in the Late Ottoman State Kemal H. Karpat 8. Shifting Centres andm Emergent Identities: Turkey and Germany in the Lives of Turkish Gastarbeiter Ruth Mandel Part IV: Saints, Scholars and Travel 9. Pedigrees and Paradigms: Scholarly Credentials among the Dyula of the Northern Ivory Coast Robert Launay 10. Between Cairo and the Algerian Kabylia: The Rahmaniyya tariqa , 1715-1800 Julia A. Clancy-Smith 11. Saints and Shrines, Politics and Culture: A Morocco-Israel Comparison Alex Weingrod 12. Ziyaret : Gender, Movement and Exchange in a Turkish Community Nancy Tapper Annotated Bibliography Glossary Index
About the author
Dale F. Eickelman, James Piscatori
Summary
Presents the results of recent anthropological and historical studies dealing with pilgrimage, religous travel and migration. It is multi-disciplinary and comparative in approach and scope.
Report
`Fascinating ... this well-balanced and valuable collection.' - Times Literary Supplement
'This multi-faceted thematic volume sheds fresh light on the issues...' - National Geographical Journal of India
