The Traveler: “A Pearl from the East, a narrative that needs tranquility”

The Traveler no longer spoke unless a question was addressed to him. One day, Sadruddin asked, “If you had to summarize in one sentence all you have learned during your life, what would you say?”
A bitter smiled covered his face. “Yes and no”

The several phases of Ibn Arabi’s spiritual life is mentioned by the narrator in an impressive way, which is the one of them the encounter of Ibn Arabi and Ibn Rusd and although they stay together for a few hours who just speak only two words : Yes and No.

The story of a universal saint together with spiritual life of well-known Islamic scholar Ibn Arabi, who had lived in Middle Age is narrated by The Traveler. The spiritual journey of this saint is also the story of a universal human being. In the subsequent chapters of the novel, Arabi’s trips to Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Damascus, Baghdad, Mecca, Medina, Malatya and Konya are narrated. Each of these trips equals to the both material changes of location and also spiritual phases. Sheikhs, wises, scholars whom the Saint was nourished from, his marriages, friendships, and his writings...

Among all these, can be seen various tales from Islamic scholars like Hallac-i Mansour, Rabiatu’l Adeviyye, Hasan-i Basri, Bayezid-i Bistami and Uveysu’l- Karani.

The Traveler is the door of modern Turkish literature opening to the West... One of the first mystical novels that was translated into Western languages...