Description
Book SynopsisThe contemporary world is defined by dizzying flows of people and ideas. But while Western travel is associated with a pioneering spirit of discovery, the dominant image of Muslim mobility is the jihadi who travels not to learn but to destroy. This book challenges these stereotypes.
Trade Review"A path breaking book... [Euben] makes clear the unsatisfactory nature of the representational categories of 'Islam' and the 'West', which have come to have such dangerous weight for extremist thinkers, both Western and Islamic, in the contemporary world... The arguments of this book are important, persuasive and nuanced."--Francis Robinson, Times Literary Supplement "Thoroughly grounded in Arabic as well as Western sources, Euben has produced a remarkable book of great value both for its contribution to specialist scholarship, and for its relevance to the urgent public policy debates of our troubled times."--Donald Malcolm Reid, International History Review "In this highly stimulating book ... Roxanne Euben examines the role of travel in the formation of one's picture of societies Islamic and Western. She is one of the rare scholars who can demonstrate thorough knowledge of both the Islamic and European material--classical Greek, English and French literature (the last in translation)."--Ahmad Gunny, Journal of Islamic Studies "This well-argued book breaks new ground in the conceptualization of travel relevant to political theory and cultural studies, and provides arguments that are rooted in close analysis of texts across time about how the politics and mechanisms that inform travel could be relevant to bridging the gap between the so-called West and the world of Islam. Through this analysis, Euben challenges the misconceptions that frame the Islamic world as insular and immobile and the West as the realm of mobility and cosmopolitanism; in this she provides a critical and timely corrective, especially in the post-9/11 world where pundits and proselytizers alike prefer broad and unexamined stereotypes rather than historicized critical readings."--Ahmed Idrissi Alami, Studies in Travel Writing
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments xi Note on Transliteration and Spelling xiii CHAPTER 1: Frontiers: Walls and Windows--Some Reflections on Travel Narratives 1 CHAPTER 2: Traveling Theorists and Translating Practices 20 Theory and Theooria 20 "Seeing the Entire World as a Foreign Land" 24 Exposures and Closures 29 Islam, Travel, and talab al-'ilm 34 The Double-Edged Nature of Travel 38 Travel as Translation 41 CHAPTER 3: Liars, Travelers, Theorists--Herodotus and Ibn Battuta 46 Herodotus 52 Ibn Battuta 63 Conclusion 86 ChAPTER 4: Travel in Search of Practical Wisdom: The Modern Theoriai of al-Tahtawi and Tocqueville 90 Authorizing Autopsy 98 Travels across Time and Space 108 Multiple Mediations 114 Conclusion 132 CHAPTER 5: Gender, Genre, and Travel: Montesquieu and Sayyida Salme 134 Montesquieu's Persian Letters 144 Sayyida Salme's Memoirs 156 Conclusion 171 CHAPTER 6: Cosmopolitanisms Past and Present, Islamic and Western 174 Notes 199 Glossary 267 Bibliography 271 Index 303
