One Thousand Roads To Mecca By Michael Wolfe

In “One thousand Roads to Mecca,” Michael Wolfe introduces us to the importance of hajj through the personal experiences of two travelers. Before the accounts of the two travelers, Wolfe explains the brief history of the expansion of Islam. According to Wolfe, Islam spread in two directions, from Mecca east to Afghanistan and west to Morocco. “As a religion and as a social order, it went on steadily expanding into Africa, India, and Asia, bearing with it a legal system, a trading network, and a coherent way of life.”( WOLFE, 3) He argues that this created a civilization and a common ground for pilgrims, traders, merchants, and bureaucrats to travel. He emphasizes that Islam spread due to its attractiveness and adaptability in those three regions. People were willing to adhere Islam because it taxed them less and offered new options.
Nevertheless, Commerce and trade became possible through the vast lands due to a complex system of caravan and sea routes. Wolfe stresses that the hajj also became a spiritual and special journey. Hajj brought Muslim people together despite their clan or race as it also exposed them to real danger. As Wolfe describes it, thousands of Muslims flocked to reach the holy city of Mecca each year. He uses the accounts of two travelers, Ibn Battuta and Ibn Jubayr, to explain the journey of the people who went to the hajj. It is important to note that Ibn Jubayr went on the journey a century before Ibn Battuta and Ibn Jubayr spent years on the journey while Ibn Battuta spent three months. These differences are important because it shows how the journeys became more faster over the