Narrating the pilgrimage to Mecca discusses a wide variety of historical and contemporary personal accounts of the pilgrimage to Mecca, most of which presented in English for the first time. The book addresses how being situated in a specific cultural context and moment in history informs the meanings attributed to the pilgrimage experience. The various contributions reflect on how, in their stories, pilgrims draw on multiple cultural discourses and practices that shape their daily lifeworlds to convey the ways in which the pilgrimage to Mecca speaks to their senses and moves them emotionally. Together, the written memoirs and oral accounts discussed in the book offer unique insights in Islam’s rich and evolving tradition of hajj and ʿumra storytelling. Contributors Kholoud Al-Ajarma, Piotr Bachtin, Vladimir Bobrovnikov, Marjo Buitelaar, Nadia Caidi, Simon Coleman, Thomas Ecker, Zahir Janmohamed, Khadija Kadrouch-Outmany, Ammeke Kateman, Yahya Nurgat, Jihan Safar, Neda Saghaee, Leila Seurat, Richard van Leeuwen and Miguel Ángel Vázquez.

Narrating the pilgrimage to Mecca discusses how being situated in a specific cultural and historical context informs the meanings that pilgrims attribute to their experiences in Mecca. The book provides unique insights in Islam's rich and evolving tradition of hajj storytelling.

In Hajj Travelogues: Texts and Contexts from the 12th Century until 1950 Richard van Leeuwen maps the corpus of hajj accounts from the Muslim world and Europe. The work outlines the main issues in a field of study which has largely been neglected. A large number of hajj travelogues are described as a textual type integrating religious discourse into the form of the journey. Special attention is given to their intertextual embedding in the broader discursive tradition of the hajj. Since the corpus is seen as dynamic and responsive to historical developments, the texts are situated in their historical context and the subsequent phases of globalisation. It is shown how in travelogues forms of religious subjectivity are constructed and expressed.

The pilgrimage to Mecca, or Hajj, has been a yearly phenomenon of great importance in Muslim lands for well over one thousand years. Each year, millions of pilgrims from throughout the Dar al-Islam, or Islamic world, stretching from Morocco east to Indonesia, make the trip to Mecca as one of the five pillars of their faith. By the end of the nineteenth century, and the beginning of the twentieth, fully half of all pilgrims making the journey in any given year could come from Southeast Asia. The Longest Journey, spanning eleven modern nation-states and seven centuries, is the first book to offer a history of the Hajj from one of Islam's largest and most important regions.

In the late nineteenth century, as a consequence of imperial conquest and a mobility revolution, Russia became a crossroads of the hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. The first book in any language on the hajj under tsarist and Soviet rule, Russian Hajj tells the story of how tsarist officials struggled to control and co-opt Russia's mass hajj traffic, seeing it as not only a liability but also an opportunity. To support the hajj as a matter of state surveillance and control was controversial, given the preeminent position of the Orthodox Church. But nor could the hajj be ignored, or banned, due to Russia's policy of toleration of Islam. As a cross-border, migratory phenomenon, the hajj stoked officials' fears of infectious disease, Islamic revolt, and interethnic conflict, but Eileen Kane innovatively argues that it also generated new thinking within the government about the utility of the empire's Muslims and their global networks.

Islam in Historical Perspective is a general introduction to Islam and the history of Muslim societies. Richly illustrated by quotations and images from Muslim scripture, historical chronicles, artistic works, and theological and juridical treatises, it invites the reader to examine this evidence and to form a comprehensive understanding of Islam’s evolution from its inception in Arabia to the present day. Combining chronological and thematic principles, this book examines Muslims’ political and intellectual struggles over the meaning and practical implications of their faith. Treating Islam as a language that various factions and generations of Muslims have used to express their grievances, aspirations, and personal experiences and preferences, the book shows the religion’s remarkable potency as a social, political, and cultural force and source of identity. It also describes and analyses Muslim devotional practices, emotional responses to the revelation, artistic and intellectual creativity, and patterns of everyday existence. The goal of this book is to help the reader to develop personal empathy for the subject by showing the relevance of the dilemmas faced by Muslims in different epochs and geographical locations to the burning issues of today’s world. A thorough analysis of pivotal events, trends, and personalities of Islamic history is accompanied by witness accounts showing how they were perceived by Muslims themselves. This new edition features a thoroughly revised text, updated bibliography, new illustrations, study questions and chapter summaries, and is an outstanding resource for students of Islam and Muslim civilization.

A Primer for Teaching Indian Ocean World History is a guide for college and high school educators who are teaching Indian Ocean histories for the first time or who want to reinvigorate their courses. It can also serve those who are training future teachers to prepare their own syllabi as well as those who want to incorporate Indian Ocean histories into their world history courses. Edward A. Alpers and Thomas F. McDow offer course design principles that will help students navigate topics ranging from empire, geography, slavery, and trade to mobility, disease, and the environment. In addition to exploring non-European sources and diverse historical methodologies, they discuss classroom pedagogy and provide curriculum possibilities that will help instructors at any level enrich and deepen standard approaches to world history. Alpers and McDow draw readers into strategically designing courses that will challenge students to think critically about a vast area with which many of them are almost entirely unfamiliar.