Description
Princeton University Press, Published 1994. Hardcover, xxiii, [4], 473 pp.; 25 cm; First Edition (with full number line); illustrated with black-and-white photographic plates of Mecca, Medina, and the Hijaz; 3 maps and plans.
Rare, out-of-print & unusual books · Since 1997
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Catalog notes
Condition & notes
In Very Good condition with a Good+ dust jacket. Black cloth boards lettered in gilt and red metallic on spine; mild shelf and edge wear. Binding tight. Hint of damp staining to bottom corners of front and rear pastedowns. Pages clean and unmarked. Pictorial dust jacket reproducing H. Mirza's early photograph of Mecca and the Haram on front panel, title in red gothic lettering; rear panel printed in orange with an eleventh-century description of the city. A few small nicks and tears, including a nick at head of front panel; damp staining to bottom corners of front and rear flaps, heaviest on rear flap, and to top corners along the flap folds, most visible on verso and showing at top corner of rear panel. Now in an archival quality (removable) Brodart cover. Literary history of Mecca and its sister shrine-city Medina, assembled from the accounts of Muslim historians and geographers and of pilgrims and travelers, many of them European Christians in disguise, from the age of Abraham and Ishmael to the fall of the last Grand Sharif, Husayn ibn Ali, to the House of Sa'ud in 1926. Includes chapters on pre-Islamic Mecca, Muhammad at Medina, the Abbasid building of the Holy Land, the Portuguese in the Red Sea, the Ottoman Hijaz, the Wahhabi wars, and the Hijaz Railway. The photographic plates, drawn from early twentieth-century archives and introduced in an essay by C.E.S. Gavin, include views of the Kaaba and the Haram by H. Mirza and Sadiq Bey. Companion to Peters's The Hajj (Princeton, 1994). Peters (1927-2020) was Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Literatures and History at New York University. Contents: List of Illustrations; Mecca and Medina in Early Photo Documents, by C.E.S. Gavin; Preface; Acknowledgments; Introduction; Maps; 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 Wars of the Kings; King and Caliph: The Sharifate of Husayn ibn Ali (1908-1925); Chronology of Mecca and the Hajj; Notes; Works Cited; Index.