What if ‘safarnama’ undermines wisdom?
By Khaled Ahmed
Journeys to the other Shore: Muslim and Western Travellers in Search of Knowledge;
By Roxanne L Euben;
Princeton University Press 2006;
Pp313; Price $29.95;
Available at bookstores in Pakistan
Sunday, September 21, 2008
The book gives other examples too, like that of Al Farabi (870-950) and Al Ghazali (1058-1111) whose great wisdom coincided with their exile and wanderings. Above the whole lot, presides Ibn Khaldun the exile par excellence whose journeys were actually triggered by his desperate effort to escape troubles incidental to overthrows of rulers he lived under. His Muqaddimah remains the biggest collection of free-wheeling theorisings on societies he had observed.
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