OTHER ROUTES

The collection includes pilgrimage accounts, which describe a 'national' circuit (as in Lady Nijo's, c. 1280, or Sei Shonagon's, c. 990, accounts) or move across vast regions to places of learning and pilgrimage or to a particular centre of religio-cultural significance (the early Chinese travellers to India in the fifth, sixth and seventh centuries, the Hajj pilgrimage of Ibn Jubayr in the 12th century, Blyden's Africanist-Christian pilgrimage to the Holy Land in the 19th century). These pilgrimage accounts can also taper into other for instance, while ibn Battutah (b. 1304) set out to go to Mecca (which he did), he ended up travelling across 50 countries and dictating what is undoubtedly a travel book in a narrow generic sense rather than the account of a pilgrimage. Other extracts range from the influential medieval travel-geography of al-Idrisi in the 11th century; the global history,