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Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women
When thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don't usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world.
Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them.
Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women provides invaluable insight into how these daring women experienced the world—in their own voices.
Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them.
Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women provides invaluable insight into how these daring women experienced the world—in their own voices.
532 pages, Hardcover
Published August 2, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 6, 2023
"Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women," edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma, is an absolute gem of a book for anyone invested in Muslim women's history and writing.
The Editors take the genre of travel writing and examine it more deeply - whose writing, traditionally, has been viewed as "travel writing"? Who even has the luxury of both traveling, writing, and having that writing preserved and/or published?
They have collected excerpts of writing from 45 different Muslim women, across time and continents, written with various intentions, and classified them under 4 categories: Travel as Pilgrimage, Travel as Emancipation and Politics, Travel as Education, and Travel as Obligation and Pleasure.
From Persian widows and Indian begums to Turkic refugees and British noblewomen, from Egyptian activists to Indonesian wives of civil servants... this book is dizzying with the incredible insights gleaned from these women's words. I can't do full justice to it here, so will have to write in more detail in my next MM Bookshelf column inshaAllah!
Truly, I am deeply grateful to the incredibly generous and kind soul who sent me this book as a gift. If you're reading this - thank you, with all my heart! I have enjoyed every single one of the 500 pages of this book.
And as someone who has traveled a little bit here and there (about 8 countries so far), this is making me wish I'd actually documented my previous journeys! Next time, inshaAllah.
5/5 🌟
#Bookstagram #Muslimbookstagram #travelwriting #history #MuslimHistory #Islamichistory #muslimwomeninhistory #IslamAndWomenReads #MuslimWomenWriters #MuslimWomenHistory #WeNeedDiverseBooks #OwnVoices #MyMuslimShelfSpace
The Editors take the genre of travel writing and examine it more deeply - whose writing, traditionally, has been viewed as "travel writing"? Who even has the luxury of both traveling, writing, and having that writing preserved and/or published?
They have collected excerpts of writing from 45 different Muslim women, across time and continents, written with various intentions, and classified them under 4 categories: Travel as Pilgrimage, Travel as Emancipation and Politics, Travel as Education, and Travel as Obligation and Pleasure.
From Persian widows and Indian begums to Turkic refugees and British noblewomen, from Egyptian activists to Indonesian wives of civil servants... this book is dizzying with the incredible insights gleaned from these women's words. I can't do full justice to it here, so will have to write in more detail in my next MM Bookshelf column inshaAllah!
Truly, I am deeply grateful to the incredibly generous and kind soul who sent me this book as a gift. If you're reading this - thank you, with all my heart! I have enjoyed every single one of the 500 pages of this book.
And as someone who has traveled a little bit here and there (about 8 countries so far), this is making me wish I'd actually documented my previous journeys! Next time, inshaAllah.
5/5 🌟
#Bookstagram #Muslimbookstagram #travelwriting #history #MuslimHistory #Islamichistory #muslimwomeninhistory #IslamAndWomenReads #MuslimWomenWriters #MuslimWomenHistory #WeNeedDiverseBooks #OwnVoices #MyMuslimShelfSpace
February 24, 2023
two moving favorites from this outstanding collection: the first, from a turn of the century young ottoman that has escaped her country and the veil, but discovers a paris and a london not so fundamentally different from the world she flees; the second, from an urban underclass tajik in the early 19th century, orphaned and enslaved by war in the steppes, and recalling, in a memoir written at the age of 53, how she came to be a teacher in a turkic-speaking town. and there are so many more!
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews