Early Modern Hajj Accounts as Framed Narratives

Abstract

It is not easy to gather the corpus of Arabic travelogues, as they developed in their diversity during several ages and in many parts of the Muslim world, within a single generic demarcation. This is even more true of hajj travelogues, which on the one hand represent a sub-genre of the corpus of travel literature, but may also be considered a separate genre within the tradition of religious literature. Hajj travelogues have appeared in many different forms which defy strict generic boundaries. In this article the author explores the possibility of conceptualizing hajj travelogues as framed narratives to develop a categorization of the corpus as a separate genre, or at least a substantial sub-genre. He proposes to recognize the interaction between a discursive, religious, frame and a spatiotemporal frame as the main common determinant of the corpus. This interaction could also be a starting point for an analysis of this type of text. Two texts from the seventeenth century are discussed as examples of this approach: the hajj travelogues of the Moroccan scholar al-‘Ayyāshī and the Syrian Sufi and scholar al-Nābulusī. Key words: Framed narratives, hajj travelogues, genre, travel literature, religious discourse, al-‘Ayyāshī, al-Nābulusī