Blending Pilgrimage and Learning or the Literary Genres of Riḥla and Muʿjam: Al-Tujībī’s Travelogue to Egypt and Ḥijāz

Abstract

From the early centuries of Muslim history, one of the most popular pilgrimage routes for the Andalusian and Maghribī pilgrims involved traveling through Alexandria to Cairo, then onward to Upper Egypt, followed by a sea journey to Jidda and finally reaching Makka. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, several Maghribī scholars followed this route, combining the pilgrimage journey with scholarly pursuits. Among them, al-Qāsim b. Yūsuf al-Tujībī (d. 730/1329) compiled a travelogue titled Mustafād al-Riḥla wa-l-Ightirāb (The Benefits of Travel and Being Abroad), in which he blended the literary genres of riḥla (travelogue) and muʿjam al-shuyūkh (biographical dictionary of one’s teachers). This article spatializes al-Tujībī’s journey, as depicted in Mustafād al-Riḥla, by employing geographical information systems software to map the locations and routes described in his travelogue. Additionally, the paper examines the structure and style of the travelogue, which blends the riḥla and muʿjam genres, highlighting the combination and hybridization of literary forms. This analysis considers al-Tujībī’s engagement with encyclopedic compilations in Mamluk Cairo and the influence of this intellectual environment on his work. Finally, by highlighting the scholarly network that al-Tujībī established in Egypt and Ḥijāẓ, the paper explores the role of pilgrimage journeys in merging religious duty with scholarly pursuits.

1. Introduction1

Al-Qāsim b. Yūsuf al-Tujībī (d. 730/1329) set out on a journey from Ceute (Sabta), his hometown located in the western part of the Maghrib, in 694/1295 to perform the pilgrimage (hajj). He traveled first to al-Andalus, then via Algeria, Tunis and Alexandria to Egypt, from there to ʿAydhāb, the port city of Egypt opening to the Red Sea, then by sea to Jidda and finally to Makka. He was not the first individual to undertake such a pilgrimage or travel from the Maghrib to the Eastern Islamicate lands, nor was he the first author of a travelogue to pen such a journey.2 However, as a scholar-traveler, al-Ṭujībī combined his two motivations, i.e., performing the pilgrimage and pursuing knowledge, in his travel notes and compiled his travelogue in a literary genre defined as riḥla-muʿjam (travelogue-biographical dictionary of one’s teachers) in this study.

Although the relationship between travel and learning in the history of Muslim societies is a theme that has been addressed in modern scholarship (Lenker 1982, pp. 103–7; Gellens 1990; Touati 2010; Newman 2019, pp. 143–44), its repercussions on travel writing have not been given enough attention. Some of the travelogues can be read not only as a mere description of the regions and cities visited by a wanderer but also as a chronicle of the learning experiences of scholar-travelers. The subject of this study, al-Tujībī’s Mustafād al-Riḥla wa-l-Ightirāb (The Benefits of Travel and Being Abroad), enables such a reading and exposes the influence of the desire to pursue knowledge on travel writing.

Riḥla texts comprise the narratives of travelers who document their experiences and observations regarding the geographical, historical, social and cultural characteristics of the regions they visited. These accounts are often informed by the travelers’ awareness of the significance of journeys undertaken for purposes such as pilgrimage or the pursuit of knowledge. On the other hand, the works in which scholars compiled the names of their teachers, as well as the narrations and texts they studied with and collected from them, are known as muʿjam al-shuyūkh, mashyakha, fahrasa, barnāmaj and thabat. The plan of these works is typically organized around either the teachers or the texts, with the arrangement following an alphabetical or chronological order. However, it is hardly possible to distinguish one of these genres from the other in terms of their content. In Interpreting the Self, edited by Reynolds (2001, pp. 290–94) and tracing autobiographical narratives in the Islamicate world, the definitions given for these genres reflect this fluidity. Here, barnāmaj is defined as biography or autobiography of religious scholars and Sufi mystics, fahrasa as a bibliography or autobiography of a scholar or Sufi figure, mashyakha as an autobiographical work “listing the subject’s teachers and what he or she studied with them”, thabat as “list of teachers” and finally muʿjam as “a list of teachers”. While emphasizing the proximity of these literary genres, Davidson (2020, pp. 242, 256), on the other hand, suggests that the muʿjam-mashyakha genre focuses on a scholar’s teachers, while the fihrist-barnāmaj-thabat genre centers on texts rather than teachers. This study, in any case, prefers muʿjam as an umbrella concept that embraces these genres, which are rather close to each other in terms of their content and composition plans.

As a work that blends the genres of riḥla and muʿjam, Mustafād al-Riḥla has not been examined holistically or through distant reading. Instead, previous studies have focused on specific themes within the travel narrative, such as records of the Mamluk-Rasulid rivalry over the governance of Makka (Mortel 1989, p. 284), al-Tujībī’s descriptions of an ancient Pharaonic building in Upper Egypt (Haarmann 1996, p. 618), his portrayal of Makka (Al-ʿAbdūlī 2010) and his critiques of the innovations in religion (bidʿa) (Imbābī 2015). The primary purpose of this study, however, is not to evaluate al-Tujībī’s detailed records of his pilgrimage or the portrayals of cities such as Cairo, Qūṣ, Asyūṭ and Makka. Instead, by looking at the text from a distance, the purpose of this study is to explore how the characteristic features of the riḥla and muʿjam genres are brought together in al-Tujībī’s travelogue. In doing so, the second section of the article introduces the intellectual biography of al-Tujībī alongside the plan and structure of his travelogue. The third section explores the riḥla dimension of Mustafād al-Riḥla by analyzing al-Tujībī’s travel notes and spatializing his itinerary. The fourth section focuses on its muʿjam dimension, scrutinizing the content related to the biographies of scholars he met during his journey. The fifth section addresses the age of riḥla-muʿjams—the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—along with the potential motives that contributed to the emergence of this distinctive genre.

2. Al-Tujībī and His Travelogue: The Compositional Plan of Mustafād al-Riḥla

The prominent scholar of the Maghrib, Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbuktī (d. 1036/1627), who lived about three centuries after al-Tujībī, devoted an entry for al-Tujībī in his biographical dictionary of Mālikī jurists. Here, he introduces al-Tujībī as the author of the well-known travelogue (referring to Mustafād al-Riḥla) and says that he was a competent hadīth scholar. Subsequently, he indicates that al-Tujībī first traveled to al-Andalus and then to the East, and during these travels, he collected knowledge from prominent scholars and recorded them in his three-volume travelogue (Al-Tinbuktī 2000, p. 362). These accounts are remarkable in showing that al-Ṭujībī established a reputation as a travelogue writer and that Mustafād al-Riḥla was in circulation among the scholars of the Maghrib even three centuries after its author’s death.

The most significant sources we have on al-Tujībī’s life are his travelogue and Barnāmaj (Al-Tujībī 1981). The latter cataloged the texts he studied and arranged them according to the disciplines (i.e., variant readings of the Qurʾān, hadīth, the biography of the Prophet Muhammad, Islamic law, Sufism, history and linguistic disciplines, respectively). Al-Tujībī’s references to Mustafād al-Riḥla within Barnāmaj suggest that the latter was compiled after his travelogue (Al-Tujībī 1981, pp. 40, 56, 98, 166). Since Barnāmaj is explicitly dedicated to documenting the texts he studied while omitting the narrative elements of his travels, modern scholarship on al-Tujībī’s library has largely focused on this text (Calvo 1977, 1980, 1986, 1995). Ultimately, both Mustafād al-Riḥla and Barnāmaj offer substantial insights into al-Tujībī’s travels across the western and eastern regions of the Islamicate world, as well as his scholarly pursuits. Although these two texts have survived and been published, a comprehensive intellectual biography of al-Tujībī has not yet been written, except for brief encyclopedic entries (Al-Shāhidī 1990, vol. 1, pp. 211–46; Fierro 2000; Kurdī 2013, pp. 58–61).

After his own works, the earliest sources providing information about al-Tujībī’s life are the biographical records of al-Dhahabī (d. 748/1348) and Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (d. 852/1449), who lived in the Syro-Egyptian region during the Mamluk period. Al-Dhahabī, in his muʿjam (Al-Dhahabī 1988, p. 194), refers to al-Tujībī with the epithet al-Raḥḥāl, meaning “the one who travels extensively,” and notes that he had previously studied hadīth in Maghrib, Egypt and Alexandria. He also records that al-Tujībī visited Damascus on his return from pilgrimage, during which they met. Similarly, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (1993, vol. 3, p. 240) mentions that al-Tujībī was born in 670/1271 and studied first in his hometown of Ceute and then in the East, where he traveled for pilgrimage. Furthermore, Ibn Ḥajar states that he examined al-Ṭujībī’s three-volume travelogue, which included a muʿjam section detailing information about the traveler’s teachers.

According to the statements of Ibn Ḥajar and Aḥmad Bābā al-Tinbuktī, who saw al-Tujībī’s Mustafād al-Riḥla in person, the book is in three volumes. However, only one manuscript covering a portion of the second volume has been found so far, and this manuscript was edited by ʿAbd al-Ḥāfīẓ Manṣūr in 1975. For Manṣūr (1975, pp. II–III), the missing first volume probably covered al-Tujībī’s travels from Ceute to al-Andalus and subsequently to Egypt via Tunis. This inference is based on the surviving manuscript, which begins with the author’s arrival in Cairo and concludes with his account of Makka. The lost third volume, on the other hand, most likely chronicled his departure from Makka to Madina, followed by his travel to Syria and his return journey. Therefore, what remains today is only a fragment of al-Tujībī’s account, specifically documenting his travels in Egypt and Ḥijāz. As illustrated in

Table 1. The compositional plan of Mustafād al-Riḥla.

1. The City of Cairo  1.1. The Cemeteries of Cairo  1.2. The Scholars I Met and Studied in Cairo  1.3. al-Qarāfa  1.4. Jīza  1.5. Asyūṭ  1.6. Akhmīm 2. The City of Qūṣ  2.1. The Scholars I Met and Studied in Qūṣ 3. The City of Abbāsa 4. The City of ʿAydhāb 5. The City of Jidda 6. The City of Makka  6.1.–6.10. [The Description of the Pilgrimage Sites in Makka]  6.11. The Scholars I Met and Studied in Makka  6.12. The Sufis I Met in Makka  6.13. The Month of Ramadan in Makka

, which outlines the structure of the surviving manuscript, the work was composed in the form of a travelogue. However, as Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (1993, vol. 3, p. 240) notes, al-Tujībī included a muʿjam section detailing the scholars he met, appended after the description of major cities he visited. The subsequent sections of the article focus on the riḥla and muʿjam dimensions of Mustafād al-Riḥla, respectively.

3. The Riḥla Dimension: Al-Tujībī’s Itinerary and Travel Notes

The characteristic features of works in the riḥla genre include the traveler’s detailed description of their itinerary, destinations, ports, accommodations, modes of transportation and the physical and socio-economic conditions of the regions visited. These works also encompass accounts of the history, legends, architectural monuments and inhabitants of the cities, all narrated in a fluent and engaging style tailored for their audience. Al-Tujībī’s travelogue reflects nearly all of these thematic and literary characteristics in various respects.

As only a portion of Mustafād al-Riḥla has survived, detailed records of al-Tujībī’s complete itinerary are unavailable. Consequently, reconstructing his full travel route presents significant challenges. Nevertheless, both al-Tujībī’s own accounts in Mustafād al-Riḥla and Barnāmaj, which reference the cities he visited beyond Egypt and Ḥijāz, along with other biographical records discussed in the previous section, provide a basis for making certain inferences on his travel route (Figure 1). Mustafād al-Riḥla offers a detailed account of al-Tujībī’s travels from Cairo to Makka. However, for information regarding his route from Ceuta to Cairo and his return from Makka to his hometown, reliance must be placed on the other biographical records. As previously noted, Aḥmad Bābā Al-Tinbuktī (2000, p. 362) recorded that al-Tujībī embarked on a journey from Ceuta, traveling first to al-Andalus before heading East. Al-Tujībī himself, in his Barnāmaj, mentions his presence in Málaga (Mālaka), one of the major cities of al-Andalus, on 12 Ramadan 694 (26 July 1295) (Al-Tujībī 1981, pp. 145–46) and elsewhere, he references his scholarly activities in this city (Al-Tujībī 1981, pp. 59, 236, 268). In another passage of Barnāmaj, he is found continuing his studies in Almería (al-Mariyya) (Al-Tujībī 1981, p. 47). These records corroborate al-Tinbuktī’s narrative that al-Tujībī traveled from Ceute to al-Andalus. After al-Andalus, al-Tujībī appears in Bijāya, located in the central Maghrib, in early 695/1295–1296. According to his records, he was in Bijāya between Muharram and Rabīʿ I (November 1295 to February 1296) for scholarly pursuits (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 65, 128, 449; 1981, pp. 110, 134). Subsequently, he traveled to Tunis in the month of Rajab (May–June, 1296) (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 257, 286, 331; 1981, p. 165) and then to Alexandria in Dhū al-Ḥijja (September–October, 1296) of the same year (Al-Tujībī 1981, p. 145; Al-Tinbuktī 2000, p. 413).

According to the records in the surviving fragment of Mustafād al-Riḥla, al-Tujībī arrived in Cairo on 6 Jumāda I 696 (2 March 1297) (Al-Tujībī 1975, p. 20). Departing from Cairo, he reached first Asyūṭ in Upper Egypt on 3 Jumādā II (29 March), then Akhmīm on 6 Jumādā II (1 April) and Qūṣ on 14 Jumādā II (9 April) (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 169–73). Approximately one month after leaving Qūṣ and enduring a challenging desert crossing, he arrived at ʿAydhāb, the Egyptian port city on the Red Sea, on 7 Shaʿbān 696 (31 May 1297) (Al-Tujībī 1975, p. 205). On 13 Shaʿbān 696 (6 June 1297), two dhows (sunbūk) set sail for Jidda, the major port of Ḥijāz. However, al-Tujībī’s vessel encountered a severe storm and was forced to return to a port south of ʿAydhāb. After surviving the white-knuckle sea experience, the pilgrimage group requested a new dhow from ʿAydhāb, and eventually, al-Tujībī was able to reach Jidda with this new vessel on 8 Ramadan 696 (30 June 1297) (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 208–18). Following a week-long journey from Jidda, he entered Makka in the middle of the month of Ramadan and remained there until the eighth day of Dhū al-Ḥijja (27 September 1297) (Al-Tujībī 1975, p. 468). Thus, the records in the surviving portion of his travelogue indicate that al-Tujībī’s pilgrimage journey from Cairo to Makka (Figure 2) lasted approximately seven months, spanning from 6 Jumādā I (2 March) to 8 Dhū al-Ḥijja (27 September).

It is not possible to ascertain the duration of al-Tujībī’s stay in Makka or Madina based on Mustafād al-Riḥla. However, the records of Barnāmaj (Al-Tujībī 1981, pp. 13, 14, 26, 71, 79, 171) indicate that he traveled onward to Syria, where he pursued his studies in Damascus beginning in early 697/1297. As previously noted, Al-Dhahabī (1988, p. 194) also mentioned in his muʿjam that al-Tujībī visited him in Damascus following his return from the pilgrimage. Concerning al-Tujībī’s return journey from Damascus to his hometown of Ceuta, however, the sources remain silent.

Al-Tujībī provides vivid accounts of the history, legends, architectural monuments, institutions, rulers, people, climate, trade and agricultural products of the cities he visited along his route. Although a comprehensive analysis of these descriptions lies beyond the scope of this study, several examples are worth highlighting to illustrate the riḥla dimension of Mustafād al-Riḥla. The surviving portion of the travelogue opens with a depiction of Cairo, the heart of Egypt and the capital of the Mamluk Sultanate. Al-Tujībī (1975, pp. 1–3) notes that Cairo was founded by the Fatimids and that the royal palace previously used by the Fatimid caliphs was later occupied by the Abbasid caliph during his visit to the city. He also mentions that the Mamluk sultan resided in the Citadel, a fortress built by Saladin a century earlier. Describing Cairo as a highly developed city bustling with markets, he portrays it as densely populated and culturally diverse, with individuals from various regions and backgrounds. Al-Tujībī further remarks that he has never encountered a city more populous or prosperous than Cairo. He attributes this exceptional prosperity, as well as the concentration of scholars and artisans, to the city’s status as the seat of the caliphate.3

While describing the religious and educational institutions in Cairo (Figure 3), Al-Tujībī (1975, pp. 4–7) highlights the architectural patronage of the Ayyubid and Mamluk sultans, as well as the military elite, who commissioned magnificent buildings throughout the city. He notes that rulers such as al-Ṣāliḥ Najm al-Dīn Ayyūb (r. 1240–1249) and many other amīrs constructed monumental mausoleums, staffed them with guards and Qurʾan reciters and provided them with generous endowments. Among these, he particularly praises the Qalāwūn complex, which comprises a hospital (bīmāristān), mausoleum and madrasa, and identifies the Bayn al-Qaṣrayn area—where this complex is situated—as the most prosperous district of Cairo. Al-Tujībī provides an account of the numerous madrasas and mausoleums lining both sides of al-Muʿizz Street, which extends from the city’s northern gate (Bāb al-Futūḥ) to its southern gate (Bāb al-Zuwayla). He further remarks on the two major mosques in the city, the Mosque of al-Ḥākim and the Mosque of al-Azhar, recording their founders and dates of construction. Subsequently, al-Tujībī headed south of Cairo and visited the Mosque of Ibn Tulun. He presents a detailed description of the construction activities in this mosque, which was being restored by the Mamluk sultan al-Mansūr Lajin (r. 1296–1299) during his visit, and of the sultan’s endowments for the mosque.4 Following about ten pages of observations on Cairo, al-Tujībī moves on to the muʿjam section of his book, where he introduces the scholars he met in the city.

After Cairo, the travelogue continues with al-Tujībī’s journey to the port city of ʿAydhāb and onward to Makka. In this section, he provides detailed accounts of the history, climate, monumental structures, legends, inhabitants and commercial and agricultural products of the cities along his route. For instance, during his visit to Rawḍa Island near Cairo, al-Tujībī describes the Nilometer and elaborates on how it was used to measure the Nile’s water levels. In Giza, located west of Cairo, he comments on the great markets and recounts his observations of the pyramids, their architectural features and the legends associated with them (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 164–68).

In Asyūṭ, a city in Upper Egypt, al-Tujībī notes the cultivation of sugarcane and its distribution across Egypt. When he arrived in Akhmīm, south of Asyūṭ, he was amazed by its ancient buildings (al-birba) and statues, remarking that the inscriptions in hieroglyphs on these artifacts remained indecipherable. As he journeyed further south, he cannot hide his astonishment at the giant crocodiles he encountered along the Nile. Upon reaching Qūṣ, al-Tujībī describes it as the largest city in Upper Egypt, bustling with merchants from Egypt, Alexandria, Yemen, India and Abyssinia. He observed an abundance of Indian goods unfamiliar to him and enjoyed a variety of exotic fruits he had never tasted in his hometown. While in Qūṣ, he stayed at al-Funduq al-Mukarram, a refined lodging associated with the Kārimī merchants—an influential group of traders deeply involved in the Red Sea and global maritime commerce (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 169–73).

Al-Tujībī’s account of his journey from Cairo to Makka presents a wealth of information relevant to the history of pilgrimage travel. His detailed descriptions (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 212–15) include the destinations he visited, the modes of transportation utilized, the navigation routes across the Red Sea, challenges faced during sea travel and observations about the ports, shipbuilding practices and the expertise of the crew. However, since this section focuses on the riḥla dimension of Mustafād al-Riḥla, the underlying reasons for the composition of such a travelogue may be discussed in this concluding part. Travelogues like al-Tujībī’s likely held considerable appeal among Maghribī scholars and prospective pilgrims. It seems plausible that many pilgrims, before embarking on their own journeys, consulted the travelogues of earlier scholars who had undertaken similar routes. Notably, al-Tujībī himself references the celebrated Riḥla of Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217), a pioneering travelogue composed a century earlier. Ibn Jubayr’s work detailed his extensive journey from Granada for pilgrimage and his experiences across the Mediterranean, Egypt, Ḥijāz, Iraq and Syria. While describing a dome he visited in Makka, al-Tujībī notes that the laypeople of the city believed it to be the birthplace of Ḥasan and Ḥusayn, the grandsons of the Prophet Muhammad, and Ibn Jubayr (1964, p. 146) held a similar view in his Riḥla. However, Al-Tujībī (1975, p. 334) criticizes the renowned traveler, arguing that reliable sources confirm that Ḥasan and Ḥusayn were born in Madina, not Makka. Therefore, the riḥla sections of Mustafād al-Riḥla served as a practical guide for pilgrims traveling from the Maghrib. These sections offered insights on the routes to take, the modes of transport to use, suitable accommodations, notable monuments and shrines to visit and proper procedures for performing the pilgrimage. Similarly, the muʿjam sections of the work provided a guide for the Maghribī scholar-pilgrims, identifying the prominent scholars they should seek out and consult during their journey.

4. The Muʿjam Dimension: The Biographical Dictionary of al-Tujībī’s Teachers

In his description of Mustafād al-Riḥla, Ibn Ḥajar al-ʿAsqalānī (1993, vol. 3, p. 240) noted that al-Tujībī incorporated a muʿjam section into his depiction of each city he visited. In these sections, he presented intellectual biographies of his teachers, enumerated the texts he collected from them and included excerpts from their narrations and poetry. This part of the study focuses on the muʿjam dimension of Mustafād al-Riḥla, as described by Ibn Ḥajar, and highlights the characteristics that distinguish it as a muʿjam alongside being a travelogue.

In the extant portion of the book, al-Tujībī provided information about his teachers using a distinctive style and structure, documenting ten scholars in Cairo, one in al-Qarāfa, two in Qūṣ and six in Makka. He did not entirely separate the muʿjam section from the riḥla narrative; rather, he consciously presented a description of each city along his route in travelogue style, followed it with a biographical dictionary of scholars he met there and then continued to the next city employing the same compositional plan. In other words, al-Tujībī adopted the form and plan of the riḥla literature as a basis while interspersing the muʿjam sections within his travel narratives.

The narrative style of the muʿjam parts of Mustafād al-Riḥla can be traced through one of al-Tujībī’s Cairene teachers, the distinguished ḥadīth scholar and historian ʿAbd al-Muʾmin b. Khalaf al-Dimyāṭī (d. 705/1306) (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 37–82). In order to introduce his teacher, al-Ṭujībī first gives information about his name, lineage, title and epithets. Subsequently, he highlights the disciplines in which his teacher excelled, including hadīth, Islamic law, linguistics, genealogy and history. To emphasize the authority of his teacher, al-Tujībī details ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s extensive travels in pursuit of knowledge, which spanned the Hījāz, Syria, al-Jazīra, Iraq and Egypt, indicating that the number of his teachers exceeded thirteen hundred scholars. Following this intellectual biography, Al-Tujībī (1975, pp. 38–46) moves to the next component of the muʿjam section, namely the narrations and texts his teacher had authorized with their chains of transmission (isnād). Then, he presents a thorough bibliography of the books compiled by his teacher in the aforementioned disciplines (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 46–48).

After providing a comprehensive inventory of the narrations and texts ʿAbd al-Muʾmin had acquired and the books he authored, al-Ṭujībī begins to list the texts and certificates (ijāzāt) he himself received from his teacher. In this part, he meticulously records where and when he received each text under the instruction of his teacher. For instance, he recounts studying ʿAbd al-Muʾmin’s al-Miʾa al-Tusāʿiyya, a ḥadīth work consisting of a hundred narratives transmitted from the Prophet through nine-link chain (isnād), at al-Zāhiriyya Madrasa in Cairo on 9 Jumādā I 696 (24 August 630), in the presence of his teacher (Al-Tujībī 1975, pp. 47–48). Al-Ṭujībī followed this systematic biographical structure for all the scholars featured in his travelogue. Therefore, the muʿjam sections of Mustafād al-Riḥla offer significant insights into the scholarly network of al-Tujībī as well as the venues of education and the circulation of texts across various regions.

Finally, the question of why al-Ṭujībī included the muʿjam sections in his travelogue and of who the intended audience of these sections warrants discussion. One can read these muʿjam narratives as an effort by an ambitious scholar to document his own intellectual journey, his teachers and the knowledge he acquired. On the other hand, al-Tujībī may have sought to highlight his arduous travels to the major intellectual hubs of the Islamicate world, such as Cairo and Damascus, as a way to establish and showcase his scholarly credentials. Moreover, he might have aimed to introduce the prominent scholars with whom he had studied, as well as the texts and narrations he received, to the scholarly circles of his hometown. Indeed, at the end of the biography of ʿAbd al-Muʿmin al-Dimyātī, Al-Tujībī (1975, p. 82) requested from his teacher the authorization (ijāza) of all his narrations for the entire scholarly community of Ceute, and when ʿAbd al-Muʾmin gave this permission, al-Tujībī praised Allah for this great blessing.

5. Al-Tujībī in the Age of Riḥla-Muʿjams

Thus far, the discussion has focused on how Mustafād al-Riḥla blends the distinctive features of the riḥla and muʿjam genres. At this point, another significant question emerges: was al-Tujībī the first author to attempt combining these two genres? Addressing this question takes us to the late 7th/13th century and 8th/14th century, a period that can be aptly described as the age of riḥla-muʿjams, since during this period, a group of scholar-travelers, including al-Tujībī, traveled from Maghrib to Makka via the Syro-Egyptian region and compiled travelogues in the form of riḥla-muʿjam. Among the most notable of these scholar-travelers are Ibn Rushayd (d. 721/1321), whose Milʾ al-ʿAyba5 details his pilgrimage journey from Ceuta fifteen years before al-Tujībī, al-ʿAbdarī (d. after 688/1289), with his al-Riḥla al-Maghribiyya, al-Wādīʾāshī (d. 749/1348), with his Zād al-Musāfir and al-Balawī (d. 780/1378), author of Tāj al-Mafriq.

Al-Tujībī was not the first author to compile a book in the genre of riḥla-muʿjam, as both Ibn Rushayd and al-ʿAbdarī had traveled to the East and produced such works roughly a decade before him. However, considering that the riḥla dimension of Ibn Rushayd’s Milʾ al-ʿAyba (Ibn Rushayd 1981–1988) is relatively limited6 and that the muʿjam sections of al-ʿAbdarī’s travelogue (Al-ʿAbdarī 2005) lack a clear and coherent compositional structure, this study argues that al-Ṭujībī’s Mustafād al-Riḥla stands out as the first text to blend the riḥlā and muʿjam genres in a balanced and systematic plan. Subsequent authors, such as al-Wādīʾāshī and al-Balawī, who undertook their pilgrimage journeys after these scholars, appear to have adopted this compositional framework (Al-Balawī 1980; Özkan 2012).

The question of why exactly this literary genre took shape in the late 7th/13th and early 8th/14th centuries calls for further explanation. All these texts were compiled by scholars who had traveled to the East, especially to Egypt and Syria. During the Mamluk period, the Syro-Egyptian region witnessed noticeable fluidity between traditional genres, accompanied by a strong enthusiasm for reclassifying and blending existing compositional structures and content. As Muhanna (2018, p. 19) suggests in his study on the proliferation of encyclopedic compilations during the Mamluk period, the increasing number of scholars and books in Cairo after the Mongol conquests created “a sense of expanding boundaries of knowledge.” The challenge of dealing with too much information led to the birth of encyclopedic works that combine various genres, compositional structures and materials. When Maghribī scholar-travelers like al-Tujībī arrived in Egypt, a mutual interaction probably took place with regard to the scholarly practices as well as the style, structure, content and organization of books. Therefore, the emergence of the riḥla-muʿjam genre may have been shaped by the authors’ intellectual experiences in the Syro-Egyptian region during the Mamluk period.

6. Conclusions

Al-Qāsim al-Tujībī, as a Maghribī scholar-traveler, was among many who combined pilgrimage with the pursuit of knowledge. However, he stood out by keeping an extensive record of his travel experiences, including detailed accounts of the scholars he met and the texts he acquired in the cities he visited. He chose to present all these accounts in a literary form defined in this study as riḥla-muʿjam, as it blends the distinctive features of a travelogue (riḥla) with those of a biographical dictionary of one’s teachers (muʿjam). In other words, al-Tujībī was not the first traveler to document his observations of the pilgrimage journey, nor was he the first to compile details about his teachers and the texts he collected from them. The striking aspect of Mustafād al-Riḥla here is al-Tujībī’s decision to compose a work titled a riḥla while incorporating the characteristics of the muʿjam into it, thus developing a hybrid genre.

Al-Tujībī’s work also provides an insightful view into the diverse yet interconnected motivations of a scholar-pilgrim in the late thirteenth-century Islamicate world, as he intertwined the performance of pilgrimage with the pursuit of knowledge through his journeys. On the one hand, al-Tujībī recounts his itinerary, the socio-economic conditions of the cities, their history, legends, architectural monuments and people; on the other, he records the intellectual biography of his teachers, along with the narrations, texts and certificates they provided him. Travelogues, in this regard, can be read not only as a record of a traveler’s impressions of the regions and cities he visited but also as a chronicle of his intellectual ventures.

For al-Ṭujībī and other Maghribī scholar-travelers, the benefits of travel and being abroad (mustafād al-riḥla wa-l-ightirāb) were twofold: the fulfillment of religious duty (hajj) and the pursuit of knowledge. Al-Tujībī was one of many scholar-travelers of the late 7th/13th and 8th/14th centuries who combined these ambitions in his travelogue. All of these authors made their way through the Syro-Egyptian region under Mamluk rule. The emergence of riḥla-muʿjams may be linked to the prevailing scholarly practices in this region at the time, which favored blending different literary genres and transforming the content and structure of traditional forms. However, a deeper understanding of the motives behind this genre would require further studies on the intellectual biographies and networks of these scholar-travelers, the reasons for their compilations and the structure and content of riḥla-muʿjams.