Four Pilgrims

A set of comparative travel accounts follows historical pilgrims whose long journeys to sacred places are described through adventure, social observation, and encounters with diverse religious and academic institutions. One section narrates a seventh-century Buddhist monk’s hazardous travels across India, his visits to monasteries and a famed university; another records an Anglo-Saxon pilgrimage to Palestine; a third traces a fourteenth-century Muslim traveller’s wide-ranging wanderings across Africa, the Middle East, and Asia; and the last chronicles an Italian Renaissance pilgrim’s passage to Mecca and farther east. The book emphasizes hazards, local customs, religious practices, and political settings encountered on the roads.