ABSTRACT

This chapter explores when Ibn Jubayr was secretary to Abu Sa id 'Uthman b. Abd al-Mumin, the Governor of Granada, his employer forced him to drink seven cups of wine, then repented and filled the subordinates cup seven times with gold according to a seventeenth-century source. Ibn Jubayr used the money to make a sort of penitential pilgrimage to Mecca. Ibn Jubayr wants to make clear to his readers that his journey was motivated entirely by the desire to perform the hajj. A map might be a visual representation of a book, but the expectation that a book will imitate a map is a clear reminder that textuality was not expressed monolithically throughout the Christian world. Pilgrimage to Jerusalem was always expensive and difficult and therefore exclusive. In medieval Europe, people sometimes tried to recreate the journey and its rewards with small physical reminders of holiness like relics and replicas.