ABSTRACT
In the book Arḍ al-Muʿjizāt. Riḥla fī Jazīrat al-ʿArab (Land of miracles. Journey to the Arabian Peninsula) the female Qurʾān scholar Bint Al-Shāṭiʾ (pseudonym for ʿĀʾisha ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, Egypt, 1913–1998) describes her 1951 journey to Mecca for the umra and a visit to Medina. She went on this trip together with a small group of university teachers and students from Cairo University. The “Land of Miracles” was very popular and had several reprints. The 1972 edition of the work adds a description of her hajj in 1972, when she revisited Mecca. Bint Al-Shāṭiʾ was one of the first Egyptian women to complete an academic study and career focusing on issues relating to religious reform, Arabic culture and the emancipation of women. In Arḍ al-Muʿjizāt. Riḥla fī Jazīrat al-ʿArab she used the framework of the journey to the Holy Land to discuss her main preoccupations, such as the Arabic religious and literary heritage, the relationship between Islam and modernity, and the position of women in Muslim societies. This paper proposes an analysis of her travelogue in the context of her reformist thought and the more general modernist trends in Egyptian culture in the first half of the 20th century.
