LLC346

Study of texts from throughout Arab history since the expansion of Islam until today, in which travelers and thinkers, academics and politicians, everyday people and people with religious or other ideological agendas describe their encounters with the world outside their own cultural environment. These texts will be analyzed less for the information they contain about the world they describe, but for what the views and thoughts their writers reveal about their own world and frame of mind. The texts will be read in translation and will cover material from the earliest Islamic travelers such as Ibn Fadlan to figures of current history such as Usama bin Laden.