page_title: Ibn Jubayr
section_title: Further journeys
hierarchical_section_title: Ibn Jubayr / Biography / Further journeys
caption_attribution_description: San Giovanni degli Eremiti (St. John of the Hermits), Palermo, Sicily. This is a cropped and tinted image of plate VI from: Knight, Henry Gally (1840). Saracenic and Norman remains, to illustrate the Normans in Sicily. London: Murray. The lithograph was printed by Charles Joseph Hullmandel. A scan of the original lithograph is available from MIT Dome. The book of lithographs were intended to supplement Knight's book "The Normans in Sicily" which had been published by Murray two years earlier. A scan of the book is available from Internet Archive
context_page_description: Ibn Jubayr, also written Ibn Jubair, Ibn Jobair, and Ibn Djubayr, was an Arab geographer, traveller and poet from al-Andalus. His travel chronicle describes the pilgrimage he made to Mecca from 1183 to 1185, in the years preceding the Third Crusade. His chronicle describes Saladin's domains in Egypt and the Levant which he passed through on his way to Mecca. Further, on his return journey he passed through Christian Sicily, which had only been recaptured from the Muslims a century before, and he makes several observations on the hybrid polyglot culture which flourished there.
context_section_description: Ibn Jubayr also travelled to Medina, Mecca, Damascus, Mosul, Acre and Baghdad. At Basra he saw how Indian timber was carefully used to make Lateen sail ships, returning in 1185 by way of Sicily. His path was not without troubles, including a shipwreck. On both occasions he travelled on Genoese ships.
  Frequently quoted is Jubayr's famous description of Muslims prospering under the Christian crusader Kingdom of Jerusalem:
  We moved from Tibnin - may God destroy it - at daybreak on Monday. Our way lay through continuous farms and ordered settlements, whose inhabitants were all Muslims, living comfortably within the Franks... They surrender half their crops to the Franks at harvest time, and pay as well a poll-tax of one dinar and five qirat for each person. Other than that they are not interfered with, save for a light tax on the fruit of their trees. The houses and all their effects are left to their full possession. All the coastal cities occupied by the Franks are managed in this fashion, their rural districts, the villages and farms, belong to the Muslims. But their hearts have been seduced, for they observe how unlike them in ease and comfort are their brethren in the Muslim regions under their (Muslim) governors. This is one of the misfortunes afflicting the Muslims. The Muslim community bewails the injustice of the landlord of its own faith, and applauds the conduct of its opponent and enemy, the Frankish landlord, and is accustomed to justice from him.
  Jubayr travelled to the East on two further occasions (1189–1191 and 1217), without leaving any account. He died on the 29 November 1217 in Alexandria during the second of these trips.
caption: San Giovanni degli Eremiti, an example of Arab-Norman architecture,[13] combining Gothic walls with Islamic domes; built in Palermo, Sicily by the Normans.[14]
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