Presenter: Juyeon Lee (Kyunghee University Institute of Korean Archaeology and Ancient History)

Safar nāma by Nasir Khusraw is the first Muslim pilgrimage account written in Persian in the 11th century. Originally from Qabodiyon (present-day Tajikistan), he was working as a financial administrator in Merv, a major city of the Seljuk Turks. One day, he dreamt of a person pointing him toward Mecca, prompting him to abandon everything and embark on a seven-year pilgrimage to the three holy cities of Islam—Jerusalem, Mecca, and Medina—as well as Cairo, then a center of Islamic scholarship. This presentation will trace Nasir Khusraw’s journey and explore what pilgrimage meant to medieval Muslims.