When Al-Ghazali determined to abandon the world and set out as a pilgrim he was only following the custom of his time. Not only religious men but adventurers found in travel relief and recreation. The pious did it, as they asserted, in imitation of Jesus, the Messiah, whose name is often interpreted as meaning “one who travels constantly.” And the worldly-minded often donned the garb of religious fakirs to satisfy their desire for adventure and their ambition to see distant lands. Because of facilities for travel by post and caravan routes, this period seemed one of _wanderlust_ second to none. A scholar was not satisfied unless he had seen the world of Islam. Of At-Tabrizi (A. D. 1030-1100), one of the contemporaries of Al-Ghazali, who was also professor at the Nizamiyya School, we read that when he desired to go on a journey for literary purposes “he had no money wherewith to hire a horse, so he put his book into a sack and started to walk the long journey from Persia to Syria. The sweat on his back oozed through the material of his sack and stained the precious manuscript, which was long preserved and shown to visitors in one of the libraries of Bagdad.” The Persian poet Saʾadi was left an orphan at an early age, went to Bagdad to attend the Nizamiyya University course, made the Mecca pilgrimage several times over, acted, out of charity, as a water-carrier in the markets of Jerusalem and the Syrian towns, was taken prisoner by the Franks, and forced to work with Jews at cleaning out the moats of Tripoli in Syria; he was ransomed by an Aleppan, who gave him his daughter in marriage. He himself mentions his visits to Kashgar in Turkestan, to Abyssinia, and Asia Minor. He even travelled about India, passing through Afghanistan on his way. [Illustration: Interior of the Great Mosque at Damascus. In the center the _Mihrab_ showing the direction of prayer and to the right the Great Pulpit.]