A Hafsid chancery official's travel book, which at each town stops to tell its history, and so preserves accounts of the Banu Ghaniya war and of Qaraqush in southern Ifriqiya and Tripolitania around 1200 (Gabès, Djerba, Tripoli, the Jarid oases) from lost Almohad-period sources. It also describes the Arab tribes of the south a century later and quotes documents and verse that survive nowhere else. A retrospective witness, but for the Tripoli and Gabès side of the war it is the fullest.
About this source
- Title
- Rihlat al-Tijani
- Author
- Abd Allah ibn Muhammad al-Tijani
- Author's dates
- active about 1275 to 1311, perhaps died 1318
- Written
- after 1309 and before 1318, at Tunis
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- a journey of 1306 to 1309 from Tunis through Gabès, Djerba and the Jarid to Tripoli, with historical digressions
- Kind
- Travel account
Rousseau's translation is partial and old. Michael Brett's article on the journey (Libyan Studies 7, 1976) is the modern guide. The 1958 Tunis edition is not online.
Where to read it
Editions
- H. H. Abd al-Wahhab (ed.), Rihlat al-Tijani (Tunis, 1958; reprinted 1981), Arabic (not freely online)