After completing their hajj in Mecca, they journeyed to Palestine, Syria, Persia, and, India. This took four years, at the end of which they returned to their native city, spending a year on the voyage. In Cordoba both were, for a time, the pupils of the Sufi woman, Fatima bint Waliyya. The Sufis regarded men and women as being equal and so scandalized the orthodox. These were sure that if men and women mingled socially, it could only be for sexual purposes.
Fatima sent Nur to Baghdad to study under a famous master there. After some months, his master sent him back to Cordoba to another great teacher. But when the Christians took Cordoba after a savage war, Nur went with his master to Granada.
After several years mere, Nur started on the series of wanderings that earned him his lackab, his nickname, el-Musafir, the Traveler. After Rome, where letters of introduction from el-Arabi and Fatima gave him safe conduct, he journeyed to Greece, to Turkey, Persia again, Afghanistan, India again, Ceylon, Indonesia, China, and Japan.
Settling down in holy Damascus, he earned his living as a musician and, as a tasawwuf or Sufi master, accepted a number of disciples. After seven years, he set out once more. He went up the Volga and across Finland and Sweden, then across the Baltic Sea to the land of the idol worshippers, the savage Prussians. Here, after escaping sacrifice to a wooden statue of a god, he made his way westward through Germany. Northern France and men England and Ireland became part of his itinerary.
At the time Nur was in London, Richard I, surnamed Coeur de Lion, was king. Richard was not in England then, being engaged in the siege of the Castle of Chalus in the Limousin, France. Richard was killed by an arrow from the castle the following month, and his brother John was crowned in May. Nur witnessed the ceremonies in the city. Some time after, he actually succeeded in gaining an audience with King John. He found him to be a charming and witty man, interested in Islam culture and in Sufism. John was especially fascinated by Nur’s reports of far-off lands.
“Traveling in those days was at best arduous and dangerous,” Frigate said. “Even the so-called civilized countries were no picnic. Religious hatred was prevalent. How could you, a Moslem, alone, without protection or money, travel safely in the Christian lands? Especially when the Crusades were going on then and religious hatred was endemic?”
Nur had shrugged. “Usually I put myself under the protection of the dignitaries of the state religions of those countries. And these got me civil protection. The church leaders were more concerned with heretics in their own faith than in infidels. In their own provinces, anyway.
“At other times, my very poverty was my safeguard. Robbers were not interested in me. When I traveled in rural areas, I would earn my keep and provide amusement by my flute playing and by my skill as a juggler, acrobat, and magician. Also, I am a great linguist, and I could pick up the language or the dialect of a place very quickly. I also told stories and jokes. You see, people everywhere were crazy for novelty, for entertainment. They welcomed me most places, though I did have a number of hostile receptions here and mere. What did they care if I was a Moslem? I was harmless, and I gave them joy.
“Besides, I radiated an assurance of friendliness. That is something that we can do.”
Returning to Granada, and finding the atmosphere there changed, not friendly to Sufis, he had gone to Khorasan. After teaching there for several years, he made another trip to Mecca. From southern Arabia he had traveled on a trading ship to the shores of Zanzibar and then to southeast Africa. Returning to Baghdad, he lived there until his death at the age of ninety-four.
The Mongols under Hulagu, Jcngbiz Khan’s grandson, stormed into Baghdad, slaughtering and plundering. Within forty days, hundreds of thousands of its citizens were slain. Nur was one of them. He was sitting in his little room playing on the flute when a squat, slant-eyed, blood-drenched soldier burst in. Nur continued his song until the Mongol brought his sword down upon his neck.