Two Journeys to Seventeenth-Century Palestine

This article describes two seventeenth-century accounts of voyages to Palestine-one by an Arab, the Moroccan jurist Salim Abdallah al-Ayyashi, in 1663; and the other by an Englishman, one "T.B.," in 1669. The two texts, though sharing a focus on holy sites inspired by their scriptures, reveal not only sharply differing views of Palestine but also widely divergent worldviews and approaches to history and the meaning of travel.

Nabil Matar is professor of English and head of humanitarian and communication Department at the Florida Institute of Technology. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Eighth International Conference on Seventeenth-Century Studies at Durham, England, 26-29 July 1999.