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1 results

  • Chapter 32 - Mecca

  • from Africa and the Middle East
  • Edited by Sebastian Sobecki, University of Toronto
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Guide to Global Medieval Travel Writing
    Published online:
    03 October 2025
    Print publication:
    02 October 2025, pp 568-586

  • Summary

    Jerusalem is at once a place in the world, a historic city in the Holy Land, and an image, an idea, a symbol. Jerusalem’s multiple facets are present in the biblical accounts of the city. Perhaps more than any other place or space on the planet, Jerusalem has been represented in writing and culture, at least since the biblical period. Encounters with the earthly Jerusalem and attempts to apprehend the heavenly Jerusalem are a mainstay of the western Christian tradition of travel writing, as well as of Jewish and Muslim literary and devotional traditions. In this essay I alight on some of key representations of Jerusalem but make no claim to completeness. Rather, in this essay I focus on Jerusalem’s status within the medieval Christian tradition of place pilgrimage, especially with regard to the dominant role Jerusalem has played in global geography, popular pilgrimage, and mnemonic retention.