The best eyewitness of the Mediterranean world fifteen years before 1200, by a secretary of the Almohad governor of Granada: the Almohad port of Ceuta and its Genoese ships, Alexandria and Cairo under Saladin with their customs houses, the pilgrim traffic from the Maghreb, Mecca under its emir and Medina, Baghdad under the caliph al-Nasir, Damascus and Mosul, the Frankish ports of Acre and Tyre with Muslims living under Frankish rule, and Sicily under William II with its Muslim subjects and Arabic-speaking court. Little he saw had changed beyond recognition by 1200, and the conditions he describes (Genoese carriage, Frankish and Muslim truces, the insecurity of the Sicilian Muslims) are the conditions of the year 1200. He is pious, hostile to the Franks and to Shi'ites, and a sharp observer of prices and officials.
About this source
- Title
- Rihlat Ibn Jubayr (Tadhkira bi'l-akhbar an ittifaqat al-asfar)
- Author
- Ibn Jubayr (Abu'l-Husayn Muhammad ibn Ahmad)
- Author's dates
- 1145 to 1217
- Written
- 1185, from a diary kept 1183 to 1185
- Language
- Arabic
- Covers
- February 1183 to April 1185
- Kind
- Travel account
Broadhurst's English translation (1952) is under copyright and not online. The Gallica link to Schiaparelli's Italian version was taken from the Wikipedia article and could not be opened in this search. Another entry may list Ibn Jubayr for the Latin East and Arabia; this one is for his Almohad, Egyptian and Sicilian pages.
Where to read it
Editions
- W. Wright and M. J. de Goeje (eds), The Travels of Ibn Jubayr, E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Series 5, 2nd ed. (Leiden, 1907), Arabic
- W. Wright (ed.), The Travels of Ibn Jubair (Leiden, 1852), Arabic
- W. Wright, revised by M. J. de Goeje (eds), The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (Leiden and London, 1907), Arabic, the standard text
Translations
- R. J. C. Broadhurst, The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (London, 1952), English (not freely online)
- C. Schiaparelli, Ibn Gubayr: Viaggio in Ispagna, Sicilia, Siria e Palestina, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egitto (Rome, 1906), Italian (not freely online)
- Russian translation (Puteshestvie) at vostlit.info, part 1 of 6
- R. J. C. Broadhurst (tr.), The Travels of Ibn Jubayr (London, 1952), English (not freely online)
- M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes (tr.), Ibn Jobair: Voyages, 4 parts (Paris, 1949 to 1965), French (not freely online)
- C. Schiaparelli (tr.), Ibn Gubayr: Viaggio in Ispagna, Sicilia, Siria e Palestina, Mesopotamia, Arabia, Egitto (Rome, 1906), Italian
Read it online
About the source
Realms this source covers in 1200
- The Abbasid caliphate: al-Nasir's Iraq and Khuzistan
- Aleppo (al-Zahir Ghazi)
- The Almohad caliphate of Muhammad al-Nasir
- Al-Adil's lands: Damascus, Kerak and the south
- Ayyubid Egypt under the boy sultan al-Mansur
- Kingdom of Jerusalem
- The emirate of Mecca under Mukthir ibn Isa
- The emirate of Medina under Salim ibn Qasim
- Mosul (Nur al-Din Arslan Shah)
- The Muslims of western Sicily
- Kingdom of Sicily under the regency
- Qatada ibn Idris and the sharifs of Wadi Yanbu