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HURGRONJE, Christiaan Snouck.
Mekka.
First edition, complete with its atlas of plates, of this historically important, and highly influential study of Islam's most holy city. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857-1936), a Dutch Arabist and traveller, received his doctorate from Leiden in 1880 for his thesis on "Het Mekkaansche Feest" (The Festivities of Mecca). His decision to test some of the propositions put forward in his study by visiting the Holy City shocked his fellow academics, but with the minimum of disguise he spent six months there. He was eventually forced to leave when the French vice-consul at Jeddah spread rumours about his presence there, hinting at unauthorized archaeological investigations, and dealings in antiquities. The first volume of the study is an historical overview of Mecca, "an account of more than a millenium of ruthless power-play" (Witkam, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje Orientalist); the second describes Meccan society in the 1880s, "the only comprehensive monograph on the subject so far." The work was met with a "mixture of enthusiasm and sheer awe. It is still a classic of exploration and anthropology." The remarkable portfolio of images adds a visual dimension, but is also in itself historically important. Many of the images are by Hurgronje himself, making him Mecca's first European photographer, and only the second ever, being preceded by the Egyptian engineer, Sadiq Bey. Hurgronje trained his assistant, the Meccan doctor and naturalist Abd al-Ghaffar, in the use of the camera, and he became the city's third, and its first native, photographer. Just 100 copies of the atlas were produced. An uncommon, and highly desirable study, both textually and visually important.
3 volumes: 2 text volumes large octavo (244 × 161 mm); folio atlas volume (363 × 285 mm). Text volumes in contemporary tan hard-grain half morocco, green and tan marbled boards, title gilt to spines in two compartments, fleur-de-lis devices in the others, patterned endpapers with floral arabesque design. Atlas in the original portfolio of half cloth, printed paper boards, now housed in a new brown quarter morocco solander box to style. 2 folding plans, one of them part-coloured, and 3 double-page genealogical tables to the text volumes, the atlas volume with 4 chromolithographic plates, 6 plates in tinted lithography, one of them the folding panoramic frontispiece, together with 65 mounted photographs on 30 leaves. A printed plate list, and a single-page guide to the text to accompany the illustrations. Text volumes just a touch sunned at the spines, and very slightly rubbed on the joints, but the contents clean and sound. Spine and corners of the original portfolio for the plate atlas restored, the chromolithographs in the atlas mildly toned and with a couple of small worm-holes to the margins, occasional spots on the photo mounts, but overall an excellent and well-presented set.
