Woodslane | Book - 9781479867844

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ISBN-13: 9781479867844
Publisher: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
Imprint: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY PRESS
By Muhammad al-Tunisi, Edited and translated by Humphrey Davies
Price: AUD $86.99
Stock: 0 in stock
Availability: This book is temporarily out of stock, order will be despatched as soon as fresh stock is received.
Local release date: 07/06/2018
Format: Hardback (229.00mm X 152.00mm) 400 pages Weight: 41g
Categories: African history [HBJH]Travel & holiday [WT]East Africa [1HFG]

Description
Google Preview: A merchant's account of his travels through an independent African state Muhammad ibn 'Umar al-Tunisi (d. 1274/1857) belonged to a family of Tunisian merchants trading with Egypt and what is now Sudan. Al-Tunisi was raised in Cairo and a graduate of al-Azhar. In 1803, at the age of fourteen, al-Tunisi set off for the Sultanate of Darfur, where his father had decamped ten years earlier. He followed the Forty Days Road, was reunited with his father, and eventually took over the management of the considerable estates granted to his father by the sultan of Darfur. In Darfur is al-Tunisi's remarkable account of his ten-year sojourn in this independent state. In Volume Two al-Tunisi describes the geography of the region, the customs of Darfur's petty kings, court life and the clothing of its rulers, marriage customs, eunuchs, illnesses, food, hunting, animals, currencies, plants, magic, divination, and dances. In Darfur combines literature, history, ethnography, linguistics, and travel adventure, and most unusually for its time, includes fifty-two illustrations, all drawn by the author. In Darfur is a rare example of an Arab description of Africa on the eve of Western colonization and vividly evokes a world in which travel was untrammeled by bureaucracy, borders were fluid, and startling coincidences appear almost mundane. A bilingual Arabic-English edition.; Google Preview content