Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing Patterns of Travel to the Middle East from Medieval to Modern Times

Front Cover
Paul Starkey, Janet Starkey
Astene and Archaeopress Publishing, 2020 - History - 408 pages
Pious Pilgrims, Discerning Travellers, Curious Tourists: Changing patterns of travel to the Middle East from medieval to modern timescomprises a varied collection of seventeen papers presented at the biennial conference of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE) held in York in July 2019, which together will provide the reader with a fascinating introduction to travel in and to the Middle East over more than a thousand years.

As in previous ASTENE volumes, the material presented ranges widely, from Ancient Egyptian sites through medieval pilgrims to tourists and other travellers of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The papers embody a number of different traditions, including not only actual but also fictional travel experiences, as well as pilgrimage or missionary narratives reflecting quests for spiritual wisdom as well as geographical knowledge. They also reflect the shifting political and cultural relations between Europe and the Near and Middle East, and between the different religions of the area, as seen and described by travellers both from within and from outside the region over the centuries. The men and women travellers discussed travelled for a wide variety of reasons -- religious, commercial, military, diplomatic, or sometimes even just for a holiday! -- but whatever their primary motivations, they were almost always also inspired by a sense of curiosity about peoples and places less familiar than their own. By recording their experiences, whether in words or in art, they have greatly contributed to our understanding of what has shaped the world we live in. As Ibn Battuta, one of the greatest of medieval Arab travellers, wrote: 'Travelling -- it leaves you speechless, then turns you into a storyteller!'

Other editions - View all

About the author (2020)

Paul Starkey, MA, DPhil, is Emeritus Professor at Durham University and Chair of ASTENE. A specialist on Arabic literature and culture, he is Chairman of the Banipal Trust for Arab Literature and until 2018 was Vice-President of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). Since his retirement, he has lectured for the U3A and other local associations in the Scottish Borders. Janet Starkey, MA (Hons), M.Phil., PhD, lives in the Scottish Borders. A former lecturer on the Anthropology of the Middle East at Durham University and a founder member of the Association for the Study of Travel in Egypt and the Near East (ASTENE), she edited the Proceedings of the Seminar for Arabian Studies between 2007 and 2018. She lectures for the U3A and other local associations in the Scottish Borders.

Bibliographic information