First English edition
Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century. Daily Life, Customs and Learning. The Moslims of the East-Indian Archipelago.
Large 8vo. VI, 309, (3) pp. With 20 half-tone plates, folding plan of Mecca, and plan of the Haram. Original blue cloth.
€ 1.250,00
First edition of the English translation of a book on the holy city of Mecca by the Dutch orientalist and professor Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936). The book is divided into four large chapters, dealing respectively with daily life, family life, learning and the Jâwah in Mecca. Each chapter is illustrated with several photographs, mostly portraits, depicting among others a physician, a merchant with his slave, a bride and groom, pilgrims and the doorkeeper of the Kaabah, and also including a view of the Masjid al-Haram mosque. The book closes with an index and two maps, one showing Mecca. During his travels Snouck Hurgronje took many pictures of the holy city and its inhabitants, which made him the first western photographer in the city. In 1888 he published two volumes in German entitled "Mekka" describing his travels, to which a "Bilder-Atlas zu Mekka" was added in 1888. The present translation is based on the second of the two German volumes from 1888, "which seems likely to appeal to a wider public" (p. V), thus representing a Mecca from nearly fifty years earlier. The two maps included in the first German volume are included here as well, and the 21 reproductions of photographs are a selection from the photographs in the "Bilder-Atlas".
Binding only slightly worn at the top and bottom of the spine. Interior slightly browned, but otherwise a very good copy, clean and well-preserved, with both the text and plates in very good condition.
Macro 1238. D. van der Wal, Christiaan Snouck Hurgonje: the First Western Photographer in Mecca, 1884-1885 (2011). OCLC 1088989. Cf. Fück 231.