Survival of an Old Literary Genre: al-Baġdādī’s Account of His Journey to Brazil

The article presents ʿAbdarraḥmān al-Baġdādī’s Musalliyat al-ġarīb (‘The Stranger’s Entertaining Story of Oddities’). The author lived in the 19th century and was active as an Imām in the Imperial Ottoman Navy. It was due to a violent storm in the Atlantic that he landed in Brazil in 1865. The work, apparently surviving in a unique manuscript, is an account of all the author saw in Brazil, and subsequently, somewhat more succinctly, of his impressions of the places he visited on his way back to his home in Damascus. The text, which showcases the author’s interest in all the miraculous elements and phenomena he encountered on his journey, is a late specimen of Arabic travel literature.