Natura ostile nella Riḥlat al-Yūsī di Maḥammad al-ʿAyyāshī b. al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī (m. 1719)

The present study focuses on the analysis of the travelogue entitled Riḥlat al-Yūsī, an Ottoman-era document belonging to the genre of the riḥla ḥijāziyya. The work, long attributed to the famous Maghrebi scholar al-Ḥasan b. Masʿūd al-Yūsī (d. 1691), was compiled by the latter’s younger son, Maḥammad al-ʿAyāshī b. al-Ḥasan al-Yūsī (d. 1719), an eyewitness of the long journey undertaken with his father in March 1690 that would lead them from Fez to Mecca, then along the return road to Timezrit (July 1691). Although the text does not present long descriptive passages of a landscape type, the narrator constantly evokes nature within his riḥla. Nature, however, often takes on a dysphoric value (violent winds, intense heat, devastating rains, wādī floods, impervious terrain, etc.), and is related to the harshness and fatigue of the journey. Starting from these elements, this study will focus on the role of the nature in this travelogue, dwelling in particular on the topos of “hostile nature” and its relationship to man.