I would have titled this translation, Islam and the Notion of Travel in the Middle Ages: The History and Anthropology of a Scholarly Praxis – closer to the French original (2000) and a better reflection of its argument. Touati focuses on travel in the central Islamic lands to show that between the eighth century (“the birth” of the riḥla as a scholar's journey in search of knowledge) and the twelfth (“the appearance of the rihla as a travel narrative” p. 2), journeys undertaken by men of letters “more than a means for acquiring knowledge, became the prime modality for creating it” (p. vii). He looks at five types of “men of letters”: ḥadīth scholars (ch. 1, “Invitation to the voyage”, pp. 11–43); philologists (ch. 2, “The school of the desert”, pp. 45–77); geographers, properly, geographical writers (ch. 4, “Autopsy of a gaze”, pp. 101–55); mystics/ascetics (ch. 5, “Attaining God”, pp. 157–99); and scholar-warriors (ch. 6, “Going to the borderlands”, pp. 201–20); and also at the personal and financial (ch. 3, “Price of travel” (79–100) and the late development of writing about journeys undertaken (ch. 7, “Writing the voyage”, 221–55). These chapters are complemented by an introduction, conclusion (“Journey to the end of the same”, 259–66), a “Chronological list of principal travel accounts” (267–8), glossary, bibliography and index.

There are astute insights: contrasting a “paradigm of hearing” and autopsia (chs 2, 4 and 5); noting that for traditionists the voyage was essential to ward off forgetfulness (p. 25); analysing al-Jāḥiẓ on tabayyun (“lucid understanding”, p. 109); realizing that “residents of the frontier saw themselves as vigorous defendants of Islam” (p. 220). Because much of the book describes modes and modalities of scholarly activity and aspiration it can profitably be read as an introduction to eighth–tenth-century Islamic culture generally. Occasionally though, important scholarship is not cited or not up-to-date, e.g. citing Arazi and Ben-Shammai (correcting “Azari” and “Ben Shammay”) on the risāla, but not Schoeler. Also, many works in the notes are absent from the bibliography, e.g. al-Iṣbahānī's Aghānī (13 n. 9) and some confused, e.g. al-Jāḥiẓ's Ḥayawān with the Tahdhīb al-ḥayawān (280 et passim) and Ibn Saʿd's with Ibn Sāʿid's.

The translation is excellent, though “bulimic” (p. 119) should be “compulsive”, “Ravishment” (p. 167) should be “Ascension”, and “Dhāhir” should be “apparent” (p. 269). “In the end they [“men of letters”] ended up saturating it with Islamism [sic]” (p. 3) is notionally captured better in the later “work collectively on the enormous enterprise of changing their geopolitical space into a dogmatic space” (p. 259). Alas numerous inconsistencies (esp. transliteration of feminine endings and ʿayn/hamza) and countless orthographic errors litter the text, e.g. fiqg > fiqh (22 n. 50); al-Sulfiyah > al-Salafiyya (25 n. 59); Louami > Souami (33 n. 92); ijai > Sizjī (36 n.102); Muʿin > Maʿīn (38 n. 106); muʿammir > muʿammar (40, 270); Fadi > Fadl (48 n. 11); Mukhtalaf > Mukhtalif (102 n. 1); Istarī > Istaẖrī (132 n. 87, 291); Nifarrī (175) > Niffarī (pace 175 n. 54); Ta’ālibī > Thaʿālibi (188 n. 105); Karrāz > Kharrāz (196 n. 136, 136 n. 139); shadādat > shahādat (271, thrice); etc. The bibliography is not immune; in the first half of p. 274 alone we find: Habīburrahmā > Habīburrahmān, A'zamī > Aʿzamī, Zughbīi > Zughbī, Muṣannāf > Muṣannaf, ʿAbd’ > ʿAbd, Ihya > Ihyā’, Wabawiyah > Nabawiyya, Thaniya > Thāniya. Though not integral to the argument, these infelicities intrude unnecessarily in an otherwise handsomely produced volume.

The University of Chicago Press is to be commended for bringing this imaginative exploration of travel as praxis to an Anglophone readership, but to be faulted for not rigorously copyediting and proofreading.