Safarnama « Simerg – Insights from Around the World

In our concluding part of the series on Naser-e Khosraw’s travels, the Ismaili poet, philosopher and traveller provides a grim look at the merciless deserts of Arabia and the predatory ways of the Arab Bedouin. He encounters camel riding pirates, and the price of safe-passage costs him and his party their money and their clothes. But he also finds great consolation during a nine-month stay in the city of Lhasa. Read his fascinating account by clicking Naser-e Khosraw’s Dangerous Homeward Journey: From “One Thousand Roads to Mecca” by Michael Wolfe or on the following image:

A portrait of Naser-e Khosraw on a large rock in Badakhshan. Please click on image to read the concluding part of his journey. Photo: Ali M. Rajput., UK.

In the early 1990’s Michael Wolfe, a prolific American writer and award winning producer of Islamic documentaries including Muhammad: The Legacy of a Prophet, became aware of a string of accounts by Muslims and non-Muslims who over the last one thousand years had gone to Mecca on the pilgrimage. Wolfe’s accounts are collected into a single volume called One Thousand Roads to Mecca, and the first of the twenty-four edited accounts is based on the Book of Travels, a classic text by the famous Ismaili poet, philosopher and traveller Naser-e Khosraw who lived during Islam’s expansive Middle period between the 11th and 14th centuries. The period has also been called the Golden Age of Muslim travel and, as Wolfe notes, Khosraw set the tone for a thousand years of Persian travel writing.

To begin reading Naser-e Khosraw’s spirited account of his journey, with an excellent introduction by Michael Wolfe, please click One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Naser-e Khosraw’s Writing About the Muslim Pilgrimage, or the image below.