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2 ABD AL-GHANI BIN ISMA’IL AL-NABULUSI. Al- Hadra al-Unsiyya fi’l-Rihlat al-Qudsiyya (“The Intimate Presence on the Jerusalem Journey”). Syria, Damascus, dated Wednesday 9 Dhu’l-Hijja 1101 ah / 13 September 1690 ce This manuscript is a highly important autograph journal of Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s travels in Palestine and Jerusalem in 1690. The content, style, and dates in the text show it is Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi’s original set of notes and records of the journey, from which he prepared the fair copy of his work, called Al-Hadra al- Unsiyya fi’l-Rihlat al-Qudsiyya . Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi (1641–1731) was the most important scholar, poet, and Sufi visionary of Ottoman Syria and the Levant in early modern times, contributing significantly to the religious sciences and mystical knowledge. Described by Sir Hamilton Gibbs as “the outstanding figure in Arabic literature of the Ottoman period”, he was a prolific author, writing over 200 works and contributing significantly to the study of Qur’anic interpretation, Qur’anic recitation, Prophetic Tradition, jurisprudence, theology, Islamic law and divine law, history, poetry, Sufism, dream interpretation, and travel literature. He was heavily influenced by Ibn al-Arabi (1165–1240), the great Andalusian mystic and philosopher, and was initiated into the Qadiriyya and subsequently the Naqshabandi Orders of Sufism. In his thirties he became disillusioned with what he saw as the spiritual corruption of the population of Damascus and hostility
from Damascene commentators, and in an effort to gain deeper spiritual insight he withdrew from public life for several years and lived an almost hermit-like existence in his house near the Umayyad Mosque. Abd al-Ghani al-Nabulusi emerged from his retreat in his late forties, and between the late 1680s and 1700 embarked on a series of extensive journeys (his rihlas). In 1688 he travelled to Balbek, the Beqa’, and the interior of Lebanon; in 1690 he went to Jerusalem and Palestine (the subject of the present manuscript); in 1693 to Egypt and the Hijaz, including a pilgrimage to Mecca; and finally in 1700 to Tripoli and coastal Lebanon. The accounts of his travels were not topographically descriptive or geographic in nature, although they included some such aspects, especially the descriptions of holy sites in Jerusalem and Hebron in the present journal. Instead they were more spiritual, recording the impressions, experiences and the religious and aesthetic feelings inspired by his travels, his meetings with religious figures and his visits to holy places such as the Dome of the Rock, the Aqsa Mosque and the many shrines and tombs of revered earlier Muslim figures and pre-Muslim prophets in Palestine and the surrounding regions. This approach is reflected in the title of the account of his journey to Palestine, A l-Hadra al-Unsiyya fi’l-Rihlat al-Qudsiyya (“The Intimate Presence on the Jerusalem Journey”), which refers both to the pious experiences he shared with notable Sufi figures and to his drawing close to the divine presence through his visit to the holy city of Jerusalem and its sacred places. He wrote much of the content of his travelogues in poetry and rhyming prose, drawing not only on his lifelong proficiency in
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