Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land

Mecca: A Literary History of the Muslim Holy Land

Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimages -- Saudi Arabia -- Mecca
Islam -- Rituals
Mecca (Saudi Arabia) -- History
Medina (Saudi Arabia) -- History

For the non-Muslim, Mecca is the most forbidden of Holy Cities--and yet, in many ways it is the best known. Muslim historians and geographers have studied it, and countless pilgrims and travelers--many of them European Christians in disguise--have left behind lively and well-publicized accounts of life in Mecca and its associated shrine-city of Medina, where the Prophet lies buried. The stories of all these figures, holy men and heathens alike, come together in this book to offer a remarkably revealing literary portrait of the city's traditions and urban life and of the surrounding area. Closely following the publication of F.E. Peters's The Hajj (Princeton, 1994), which describes the perilous pilgrimage itself from the travelers' perspectives, this collection of writings and commentary completes the historical travelogue. The accounts begin with the Muslims themselves, in the patriarchal age of Abraham and Ishmael, and trace the sometimes glorious and sometimes sad history of Islam's central shrine down to the last Grand Sharif of Mecca, Husayn ibn Ali, whose fragile kingdom was overtaken by the House of Sa`ud in 1926. Because of chronic flooding and constant rebuilding, there is little or no material evidence for the early history of Islam's holy cities. -- Publisher description.

F.E. Peters

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press

A speculative history of Mecca in the age of ignorance --- Muhammad: Medina and after --- Building the Holy Land --- Caught in the spice chain: Europe and the Hijaz --- The Ottoman Hijaz --- The two sanctuaries --- The war of the kings --- King and Caliph: the Sharifate of Husayn ibn Ali (1908-1925).

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