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Travel Book of Nasir-i Khusraw

Nasir-i Khusraw was an eleventh-century Persian poet and writer on religious subjects who also wrote an account of his seven years of travel to Palestine, Arabia, and Egypt. His poems and religious writings have remained influential, especially for adherents of Ismaili Islam in Central Asia and Iran. But Nasir's account of his travels, the Safarnama, was not translated into English in its entirety until 1986. The book provided little unique information but it offered a coherent, first-hand picture of the sights of Jerusalem, Mecca, and Cairo and interesting, if limited, insights into an eleventh-century personality. Recently, however, scholars have begun to connect the circumstances of Nasir's long journey and his unusual itinerary with the fact of his, perhaps well-established, conversion to Ismaili beliefs. Since Nasir's permanent contribution was to the furthering of Ismailism, studying the Safarnama as evidence of the author's growing commitment to Ismaili beliefs--including his adoption of a vow to serve the Ismaili Imam of Cairo and the dawa of the Ismailiyya--the significance of where he went, what he reported on (and did not report on), and the manner in which he represented what he saw take on even greater interest. A brief review of Nasir-i Khusraw's life, including his role in Ismailism, and the history of the Safarnama will be followed by analyses of portions of the text of his travel book.

Nasir-i Khusraw, whose full name was Abu Muin Nasir b. Khusraw b. Harith al-Kubadhiyani, was born in 1004, by the Western calendar, in Kubadhiyan, in the region of Marw to a family of landowners and officials. The little that is known about his early life derives from his writings, primarily the Safarnama and the poems in the Diwan. Such details, rather than constituting any strictly ordered autobiography, however, reflect "Nasir's own retrospective arrangement of his life to reflect what he regards as phases in his moral a...

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Travel Book of Nasir-i Khusraw. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 09:02, March 28, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1694456.html