“Travel, and you will find a replacement for what you leave behind; strive, for the sweetness of life is in striving.”

From the Diwan attributed to al-Shafi‘i, out of a poem in praise of travel — written by a man who left Gaza as a child for Makkah, then Madinah, then Yemen, Baghdad and finally Egypt, where he died. The lines that follow list what travel yields: relief from worry, a living, knowledge, manners, and company worth keeping.