From Sicily to Granada on Ibn Jubayr's return road

A stage of Ibn Jubayr's pilgrimage, on his way back to al-Andalus: from Messina in Sicily to Shughludi, the capital of Sicily and Trapani, then by sea to the island of Babsa and Cartagena, then overland to the lodging at Granada ¹.

Ibn Jubayr stayed in Messina for nine days in one of the inns. Then he boarded a small boat on the night of Tuesday to Shughludi, and they reached its harbour in the evening of Wednesday ².

From Shughludi they went by land to the capital of Sicily, where they were at first prevented from entering ³. They then alighted at one of its inns on Saturday, the sixteenth of the month ⁴.

From the capital of Sicily they took the road on the backs of animals, and passed a town with hot baths in which they bathed. They reached Trapani in the afternoon of that day ⁵.

At Trapani they waited for a ship heading to al-Andalus. The king of Sicily issued an order forbidding ships to leave the coasts of his island, because of a fleet he was preparing ⁶. When they were allowed to travel, they set out from the harbour of the Monk's Island near Trapani. Winds drove them to the coast of Ifriqiya near the island of Khalita, so they returned to the Monk's Island. There they found a Genoese ship carrying a company of Maghribis whom they had parted from in Mecca ⁷.

Then they sighted the coast of the island of Babsa on the night of Saturday, the tenth of the month, and entered its harbour ⁸. They sighted the mountains of Denia and alighted at Cartagena in the evening of Thursday, the fifteenth of the month ⁹.

From Cartagena he travelled by land in stages that the text names: Mosa, Lorca, Lorqua, al-Mansura, Qanalish or Baza, then Wadi Ash, until he reached the lodging at Granada on the twenty-fifth of April ¹⁰.

The page numbers follow the scanned file of the 1907 edition. In this part the text runs from higher to lower page numbers, so the notes appear in reverse order to the page numbers.

The Hijri year is stated explicitly in the heading "the month of Muharram of the year eighty-one" (p.78), which is the year to which the events of this part are attributed. The days of the months in other passages are given without a year, so no Gregorian dates have been calculated, and no dated entries have been entered in the data.

The journey from Messina to Shughludi, from the Monk's Island to Babsa, and from Cartagena to Granada is divided into legs according to the text. The land stages between Cartagena and Granada are not separated into distinct legs, because the intermediate places do not yet have place files.

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