Ibn al-Hawrani's Kitab al-Isharat ila Amakin al-Ziyara and its evaluation

Visiting book type works deal with the visiting points of different cultures and beliefs in Islamic geography as well as in the world geography, visits to the graves and places of important names in human history, tombs and shrines, places of worship, sacred objects in places of visit, historical buildings and other various works. These types of works are original types of travel literature that generally provide information about social sciences such as history, geography, sociology, theology and anthropology, as well as giving first-hand information to the reader about the cultural heritage that humanity has gifted to subsequent generations in fields such as literature and art. Although visitologues are similar in terms of content and style to travelogues, which are considered as a classical type of travel literature, and to works written in the genre of fezail, where narrative culture predominates, they have a different nature and content from these types in terms of being a travel guide for visitors. Visiting books directly describe the graves and places of prophets, companions, followers, rulers, scholars, saints, and many other people who are considered sacred in various religions and beliefs. In addition, visitation books deal with both the theoretical and practical sides of the concept of visitation, as they emphasize the importance of visiting sacred places and the rules to be followed during the visit. Over time, visiting books develop as an independent genre under the genre of fezail and constitute the final point in the evolution process of works written in this genre. The visitation book of Ibn al-Hawrani, Kitab al-Isharat ila Amakin al-Ziyarat, is a clasical visitation book that has taken its place in the literature as a local visitation book written specifically for the city of Damascus and the places of visit around it. Ibn al-Hawrani is a sufi who served as a traveling preacher in the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus under Ottoman rule in the 16th century and he was a member of the Shazeli sufi brotherhood (tarikah). In his visitation book on the holy places and visiting locations in Damascus and its surroundings, he tried to portray the relationship of the period and society in which he lived with the sacred in a simple way. In his work, which is a classic local visitation guide, he introduces the holy places such as tombs, mashhads, symbolic graves (makams), cemeteries, mausoleums, mosques, masjids, zawiyas and holy people in the city of Damascus and its surroundings. In addition, various historical structures such as walls, bazaars and madrasahs in and around the city of Damascus are also included in the content of the work. The purpose of this study is to briefly give information about the life and works of Ibn al-Havrani, and then to introduce the shrines in Damascus and its surroundings towards the end of the 16th century, in the light of the information in his visitation book, and to try to determine the values that the people attributed to them. In addition, it is to determine how humans in general and the Muslim society in particular establish a relationship with the sacred and the various aspects of this relationship.