Travel Literature
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Join us for this free course, where we will learn about Arab travelers like Ibn Batuta, Ibn Seena and others
Description
In this four-week course, we will visit Egypt, the Levant, the Hijaz, India, Central Asia, Europe, Central America, and the United States through a millennium of Arabic writing. The travelers whose work we will read commented on issues of race, religion, economics, trade, culture and so much more. Students will view short videos that describe key texts in the history of Arabic travel writing, medieval and modern, and they will also read original excerpts from these works. Students will also be asked to think of their own travel experiences and be challenged to describe environments, both familiar and strange. Rather than simply read about the most famous medieval Arab travelers, students will read what these travelers themselves wrote in order to imagine how these people experienced the marvelous and mundane places they visited.
What you’ll learn
The history of Arabic travel writing, from the 9th to 21st centuries.
The motivations for travel, the means of travel, and the challenges that pre-modern Arab travelers faced
Reality vs. fiction in travel literature
A wide variety of sources that will prepare students to do further research on the topic
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