Islamic and Middle Eastern Geographers and Travellers: Critical Concepts in Islamic Thought

The area of Middle Eastern geography and travel has attracted large numbers of scholars over the last fifty years. This new collection from Routledge features key articles from the field to create a major and continuing resource for scholars and students alike.

The first volume concentrates on the Islamic geographers who mapped and made navigable the routes followed by later travellers. While travel, and in particular the rihla (or 'travel to Mecca') did not depend for its impetus on formal geography, both were highlighted in the travellers' diaries and travelogues which helped to make known and illuminate the boundaries of an expanding empire. Links between geography and the pilgrim routes to Mecca and Medina are particularly significant.

Because of their huge significance in illuminating the medieval world of Islam, a very large number if articles deal with the travels of Ibn Jubayr (1145-1217) (Volume II) and Ibn Battuta (1304-368/9 or 1377) (Volume III), while Volume IV covers the post-medieval and early modern period.