PVLF 2025

Discover the forgotten female explorers of the Muslim world

on Aug 19, 2022

"I shall write novels and compose poems as long as I live," writes Nur Begum, who traveled to Makkah with her mother and husband on a three-month pilgrimage in 1931.

"I will never be sorry, no matter how much they gossip and blame me. I have no children in this world, but I have this heavenly calling; individuals are remembered by their children, but this will be my legacy!"

Hers is only one of many female voices in the book Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women, which was published on Tuesday. It is a compilation of lesser-known writings by Muslim women who left their homelands for pilgrimage, education, politics, or pleasure.

Until now, men have dominated historical travelogues, such as the great 14th-century Moroccan adventurer Ibn Battuta, whose writings made him famous around the world. Similarly, the few women with European ancestry whose names have been immortalized include Margery Kempe, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Mary Kingsley.

Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women, edited by Siobhan Lambert-Hurley, Daniel Majchrowicz, and Sunil Sharma, has works from 45 Muslim women culled from an enormous range of writings in 10 languages, including Arabic, Turkish, Urdu, Punjabi, Indonesian, English, and others.

The editors first secured funding from the Leverhulme Trust for a project on Muslim women travelers from Asia and the Middle East, which set the way for the substantial research that went into compiling the collection's writings.

Lambert-Hurley says the inspiration for the book came from a previous project she worked on with Sharma on Atiya Fyzee's 1906 travel diaries. "We realized there were many more travelogues written by women and planned a huge translation endeavor," she explains.

Majchrowicz had already collated various trip reports by Muslim women as part of his research on the history of travel writing in South Asia before joining the team.

The team spent seven years putting together the anthology, which spans the 17th to 20th centuries, pulling together pieces from royal family members, women from powerful households, and even a handful from humble beginnings.

The first traveler we meet in the collection is a woman solely known as the "Lady of Esfahan." Originally written in Farsi verse, she describes a pilgrimage to Makkah after her husband's death.

"Since crafty fate had me suffer separation from my lovely beloved, repose in bed was denied to me," she says. I saw no other option except to travel. I couldn't sleep at night or rest during the day until I could circumambulate the Kaaba sanctuary. I readied myself and set out with determination."

Some of the extracts in the anthology came from private collections and had never been published, while others, like the Lady of Esfahan's, were hidden inside collections in their original languages.

Others, such as an excerpt by the Mughal Princess Jahanara Begum, were uncovered through prior work on missing manuscripts and published in journals. The second piece from the 17th century is the princess' contribution, which documents an introduction to a Sufi order in Lahore.

The editors gathered a number of texts including autobiographical tales, essays, talks, poems, magazine pieces, letters to relatives, and private diary entries. Some letters and diary entries, such as those written by Begum Sarguland Jang, Ummat Al Ghani, Nur al Nisa, and Muhammadi Begum, were intended only for family members to read.

Lambert-Hurly claims that locating sources required a significant amount of investigative work. "Some of the books were published for private circulation, and we were fortunate to find rare copies from several individuals," Sharma continues.

Travel allowed many of the women to ponder on people and places that were different from their own. Their writings provided an intimate look into the inner life of women who were not otherwise seen or written about. They were able to compare the landscapes of their own worlds to those of others through their art.

Several selections in the anthology, however, contradict the myth of women's writing being focused on private areas.

Dilshad, a Tajik poet, historian, and teacher who was abducted and forced to flee to Uzbekistan when her homeland was invaded, weaves her personal narrative around the political and cultural upheavals that surrounded her.

Another extract from Egyptian writer Amina Said's travelogue on India discusses her thoughts on Indian cities and how she set about correcting inaccurate perceptions of the Palestinian dilemma she found in the country.

Meanwhile, Muhammadi Begum writes on colonialism, and Zeyneb Hanoum wonders if the women of "the Orient" need to be saved.

Several of the texts are about women's Hajj or pilgrimages to Makkah. Nawab Sikandar Begum depicts pilgrims being quarantined on Kamran island, off the coast of Yemen, as a reminder that travel restrictions predate the Covid-19 issue.

Meanwhile, while Rahil Begum Shervaniya complains about the absence of privacy in communal women's showers, Nur Begum's rhyming lyrics depict it as a space where women are drawn together in their common effort to purify themselves before Hajj.

Over the ages, publications have shown how the Lady of Esfahan's grueling road voyage transformed into a water journey, preceding the vastly simpler journey by plane accomplished by Lady Evelyn Cobbold, who claimed to be the first European woman to do Hajj.

Each chapter begins with biographical information about the women and ends with an analysis and context for their writing. Many further passages from the book are available on the website Accessing Muslim Lives.

"Some of the additional translations that could not fit in the book can now be available on the website," Majchrowicz explains. We also felt it was critical to provide as much access to the original manuscripts in their original languages as feasible.

"Readers who can read the original languages can go to the website and hear their words immediately, without the need for a translator." Finally, the internet allows us to integrate the works of new authors as we discover them."

Readers are immersed in the cyclical nature of global upheavals, whether in the shape of disease, war, forced immigration, or the fight for the right to live peacefully, as they read the book.

What emerges is a group of female writers who were unafraid to express themselves in the presence of authority figures and adverse conditions. Three Centuries of Travel Writing by Muslim Women Writers is a lasting tribute to only a handful of the innumerable remarkable stories documented by female travelers throughout history.