Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women

Description

Interview with coeditor Sunil Sharma in The Journal of the Core Curriculum: Travel Writing in a Time of Limited Travel

When thinking of intrepid travelers from past centuries, we don't usually put Muslim women at the top of the list. And yet, the stunning firsthand accounts in this collection completely upend preconceived notions of who was exploring the world.

Editors Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma recover, translate, annotate, and provide historical and cultural context for the 17th- to 20th-century writings of Muslim women travelers in ten different languages. Queens and captives, pilgrims and provocateurs, these women are diverse. Their connection to Islam is wide-ranging as well, from the devout to those who distanced themselves from religion. What unites these adventurers is a concern for other women they encounter, their willingness to record their experiences, and the constant thoughts they cast homeward even as they traveled a world that was not always prepared to welcome them.

Perfect for readers interested in gender, Islam, travel writing, and global history, Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women provides invaluable insight into how these daring women experienced the world—in their own voices.

Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation, Transliteration and Syntax
Introduction: Muslim Women, Travel Writing and Cultures of Mobility, by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Daniel Majchrowicz
Part I: Travel as Pilgrimage
1. The Widow of Mirza Khalil: A Bereaved Wife Seeks Solace
2. Nawab Sikander Begum: A Queen's Impressions of Mecca
3. Mehrmah Khanom: Adventures on the Road to Iraq
4. Hajiyeh Khanom Alaviya Kermani: Iran to Mecca by Way of Bombay
5. Sakineh Soltan Khanom Esfahani Kuchak: Iraq Diary
6. Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum: The Long March to Medina
7. Ummat al-Ghani Nur al-Nisa: Notes from Mecca and the Levant
8. Begum Sarbuland Jang: Seeking Sisterhood in Damascus
9. Rahil Begum Shervaniya: Life Aboard a Pilgrim Ship
10. Nur Begum: Poems from a Punjabi Pilgrim
11. Zainab Cobbold: At Home in the Hijaz with a British Convert
12. Fatima Begum: An Indian Haji Observes her Fellow Pilgrims
13. Qaisari Begum: The Long Road to Mecca
14. Begum Hasrat Mohani: Letters from a Pilgrimage to Iraq
15. Mahmooda Rizvi: Three Months in Iraq
Part II: Travel as Emancipation and Politics
16. Melek Hanim: A Turk among the Greeks
17. Huda Shaarawi: A European Summer on the Eve of War
18. Zeyneb Hanoum: A Turkish Désenchantée in Europe
19. Selma Ekrem: Alone in New York City
20. Şükûfe Nihal Başar: Three Days in Finland
21. Halide Édib: A Turkish Nationalist in Colonial India
22. Amina Said: An Egyptian Feminist at an Indian Conference
23. Shareefah Hamid Ali: Representing India at the United Nations
24. Suharti Suwarto: Ten Indonesian Women in the Soviet Union
Part III: Travel as Education
25. Atiya Fyzee: Living and Learning in London
26. Maimoona Sultan: To Turkey by Train through a Child's Eyes
27. Sediqeh Dowlatabadi: An Iranian Feminist Travails in France
28. Begum Habibullah: With Three Boys at an English Boarding School
29. Iqbalunnisa Hussain: At the University of Leeds
30. Muhammadi Begum: Oxford Diary
31. Herawati Diah: A Journalist in the Making
32. Mehr al-Nisa: An Indian Nurse in Ohio
33. Zaib-un-nissa Hamidullah: Sixty Days in America
Part IV: Travel as Obligation and Pleasure
34. Princess Jahanara: Mystical Meetings in Kashmir
35. Dilshad: A Prisoner is Taken to Khoqand
36. Sayyida Salamah bint Said/Emily Ruete: A Lover's Flight from Zanzibar
37. Taj al-Saltanah: Life and Death in Qajar Iran
38. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: A Pleasure Trip to the Himalaya
39. Nazli Begum: On Grand Tour with the Nawab of Janjira
40. Safia Jabir Ali: Touring Europe on Business
41. Sughra Humayun Mirza: Meeting the Caliph in Switzerland
42. Sughra Sabzvari: An Indian Family in Iran
43. Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah: Life in England on the Brink of War
44. Shams Pahlavi: A Shah's Daughter in Exile
45. Nyonya Aulia-Salim: An Indonesian Tours America by Motor
Glossary
Contributors
Index

Sujets

• Women's Studies
• Arabic
• Islamic Studies
• Social Science
• Sociologie, société et politique
• South Asia
• Mobility
• Travelogue
• Gendér
• Travel writing
• Travel
• Ethnography
• Poor
• Urdu
• Turkish
• Social sciences
• Middle East
• Colonialism
• Arabic language
• Anthropology
• Pilgrimage
• Rich
• Islam
• Ourdou
• Essay
• Persian
• Translation

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 02 août 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780253062062
• Langue: English

Extrait

THREE CENTURIES OF TRAVEL WRITING BY
MUSLIM WOMEN
THREE CENTURIES OF TRAVEL WRITING BY
MUSLIM WOMEN

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma, editors
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.org
2022 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
First printing 2022
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress.
ISBN 978-0-253-06204-8 (hardback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06239-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-06205-5 (ebook)
"1;
"1; "1; "1;
"1;



"1;
I will write books and compose poetry for as long as I live;
No matter how much they gossip and reproach me, I will never regret it.
I have no offspring in this world, but I do have this divine calling;
People are remembered by their children, but my legacy shall be this!
May I be remembered, through my writing, until the Day of Judgment,
And on that day, may God shield me from every hardship.
-Nur Begum, Manifestations of Celestial Light
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
A Note on Translation, Transliteration, and Syntax
Introduction: Muslim Women, Travel Writing, and Cultures of Mobility / Siobhan Lambert-Hurley and Daniel Majchrowicz
PART I. Travel as Pilgrimage
1. The Widow of Mirza Khalil: A Bereaved Wife Seeks Solace
2. Nawab Sikandar Begum: A Queen s Impressions of Mecca
3. Mehrmah Khanom: Adventures on the Road to Iraq
4. Hajjiyeh Khanom Alaviya Kermani: Iran to Mecca by Way of Bombay
5. Sakineh Soltan Khanom Esfahani Kuchak: Iraq Diary
6. Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum: The Long March to Medina
7. Ummat al-Ghani Nur al-Nisa: Notes from Mecca and the Levant
8. Begum Sarbuland Jang: Seeking Sisterhood in Damascus
9. Rahil Begum Shervaniya: Life Aboard a Pilgrim Ship
10. Nur Begum: Poems from a Punjabi Pilgrim
11. Lady Evelyn Zainab Cobbold: At Home in the Hijaz with a British Convert
12. Fatima Begum: An Indian Hajji Observes Her Fellow Pilgrims
13. Qaisari Begum: The Long Road to Mecca
14. Begum Hasrat Mohani: Letters from a Pilgrimage to Iraq
15. Mahmooda Rizvia: Three Months in Iraq
PART II. Travel as Emancipation and Politics
16. Melek Han m: An Ottoman among the Greeks
17. Huda Shaarawi: A European Summer on the Eve of War
18. Zeyneb Hanoum: A Turkish D senchant e in Europe
19. Selma Ekrem: Alone in New York City
20. k fe Nihal Ba ar: Three Days in Finland
21. Halide dib: A Turkish Nationalist in Colonial India
22. Amina Said: An Egyptian Feminist at an Indian Conference
23. Shareefah Hamid Ali: Representing India at the United Nations
24. Suharti Suwarto: Ten Indonesian Women in the Soviet Union
PART III. Travel as Education
25. Atiya Fyzee: Living and Learning in London
26. Maimoona Sultan: To Turkey by Train through a Child s Eyes
27. Sediqeh Dowlatabadi: An Iranian Feminist Travels to France
28. Begum Inam Habibullah: With Three Boys at an English Boarding School
29. Iqbalunnisa Hussain: At the University of Leeds
30. Muhammadi Begum: Oxford Diary
31. Herawati Diah: A Journalist in the Making
32. Mehr al-Nisa: An Indian Nurse in Ohio
33. Zaib-un-nissa Hamidullah: Sixty Days in America
PART IV. Travel as Obligation and Pleasure
34. Princess Jahanara: Mystical Meetings in Kashmir
35. Dilshad: A Prisoner Is Taken to Khoqand
36. Sayyida Salamah bint Said / Emily Ruete: A Lover s Flight from Zanzibar
37. Taj al-Saltanah: Life and Death in Qajar Iran
38. Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: A Pleasure Trip to the Himalaya
39. Nazli Begum: On Grand Tour with the Nawab of Janjira
40. Safia Jabir Ali: Touring Europe on Business
41. Sughra Humayun Mirza: Meeting the Caliph in Switzerland
42. Sughra Sabzvari: An Indian Family in Iran
43. Shaista Suhrawardy Ikramullah: Life in England on the Brink of War
44. Shams Pahlavi: A Shah s Daughter in Exile
45. Nyonya Aulia-Salim: An Indonesian Tours America by Motor
Glossary
Contributors
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A BOOK OF THIS TYPE is, inevitably, a truly collaborative venture.
Funding for the research was generously provided by a three-year project grant from the Leverhulme Trust in the United Kingdom (2015-18). Siobhan Lambert-Hurley also benefited from a visiting post in the Department of History at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada (2017). Daniel Majchrowicz benefited from the support of funding from Northwestern University in completing research on travel writing in early Urdu periodicals.
The core team of Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma collected most of the research materials. However, we were supported by an advisory committee made up of regional specialists. Our thanks to H lya Adak, Asiya Alam, Margot Badran, Marilyn Booth, Roberta Micallef, and Nawar al-Hassan Golley for their invaluable contributions and advice. Sylvia Vatuk inspired us early on by sharing a text from Hyderabad. C. Ceyhun Arslan and Greg Halaby offered additional expertise on Arabic texts. For their guidance on Southeast Asian materials, we thank Sylvia Tiwon, Megan Hewitt, John Roosa, Tineke Hellwig, and Eric Tagliacozzo. Margaret Litvin, Marianne Kemp, Eileen Kane, Masha Kirasirova, and Maximilian Drephal provided important aid in our search for Central Asian texts. Nurten Kilic-Schubel later filled a gap there. Later on, Andrew Amstutz also drew our attention to a unique text from Sindh, as did Hans Harder to a text in Bengali. Although some of the original travel accounts have been republished, far more emerged from private and archival collections in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, Uzbekistan, Pakistan, India, Indonesia, and Australia. We are particularly grateful to the Jhander Library in Mailsi, Pakistan, for sharing with us several accounts in Urdu and Punjabi.
While in progress, parts of our material were presented to a number of academic forums before engaged and thought-provoking audiences. A first opportunity was a panel entitled As Seen by a Woman : Reading Travel Writing from Muslim South Asia at the Annual Conference on South Asia, University of Wisconsin at Madison, October 20-22, 2016. A second was a panel entitled Veiled Voyagers: Muslim Women Travelers from Asia and the Middle East at the Seventeenth Berkshire Conference on the History of Women, Genders and Sexualities, Hofstra University, New York, June 1-4, 2017. We also disseminated the research in numerous individual presentations and benefited from the feedback we received. For example, Lambert-Hurley presented at the Fourth European Congress on World and Global History; the Gendered Lives Research Group at Loughborough University; and the Institute of Modern Languages Research, University of London. Majchrowicz delivered papers at LUMS University in Lahore, Habib University in Karachi, Buffalo University, the University of Punjab in Lahore, Gadjah Mada University in Yogyakarta, Northwestern University, and the University of Chicago. Sharma spoke at the University of Kashmir, State University of New York at Binghamton, and Yale University.
We also undertook public engagement activities to reach a wider audience. Of particular note was a collaboration with Dead Earnest Theatre in Sheffield to produce an immersive theater experience based on the project s research materials. Veiled Voyagers-A Mahfil has so far been staged at Festival of the Mind (September 28-29, 2018) and the Migration Matters Festival (June 16-17, 2019) in Sheffield. It was also translated into a radio play for the virtual program of Britain s inaugural South Asian Heritage Month in August 2020 (available on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/DpPNXi9Yvug ). The lively Q A sessions at the end of these performances alerted us to what a general audience found significant in our historical materials and thus helped to structure the introduction here. We mark our debt to the wonderful and ever calm Charlie Barnes, who directed the productions, and the amazing cast of actresses, musicians, and dancers who brought the women in this book to life. Lambert-Hurley and Majchrowicz also benefited enormously from presenting the book s materials at two public events in Pakistan in November 2018, namely Meet the Author: An Anthology of Muslim Women Travelers at the Faiz International Festival, Lahore, November 16-18, 2018, and Veiled Voyagers: A Workshop on Muslim Women Travel Writers from Asia and the Middle East, British Council Library, Karachi, November 20, 2018. Our thanks especially to Moneeza Hashmi at FIF and Gayle Franklin at the British Council for their kind invitations, generous hospitality, and careful organization. Early in the project, Lambert-Hurley also prepared a journalistic piece drawing on these materials, Indian Students at British Universities Is a Tradition We Should Cherish and Protect, for The Conversation , December 16, 2016. It drew useful feedback when it was republished in several Indian outlets, plus The Independent in the United Kingdom.
As a published work, there were many individual contributions to the collective output of specific chapters. The attributions in the first note of each chapter recognize the main players involved in preparing them for publication-those who composed introductions, completed fresh academic translations, and assembled annotations and further reading. In an insufficient attempt at scho