SOUBHY (Saleh). Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Preceded by - Lot 14

SOUBHY (Saleh). Pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. Preceded by an overview of Islamism and followed by general health considerations and an appendix on circumcision. Cairo, Imprimerie Nationale, June 1894. One volume in-8, full brown boards, gilt title on spine. 129 pp, (1) f. table. Paper uniformly browned, minor soiling to title page, light soiling, traces of folding to last 6 ff. with marginal soiling to 2 pp. and a small tear to bottom margin of p. 123/124. 19 photographic plates reproduced in phototype from plates by Sadiq Bey and others, including the Author and views of Mecca and Medina. First edition of this rare and important account of the pilgrimage to Mecca (Hajj) in Ottoman times, undertaken from 1888 to 1894 by the Egyptian doctor Saleh Soubhy Pacha, physician attached to the pilgrimages. This text is both a travelogue and an ethnographic and sanitary study of the pilgrimage, with descriptions of the caravans, rites, holy cities and pilgrims' transport conditions. "Sadiq Bey's photographs are indisputably considered the earliest capturing a Muslim pilgrimage to the holy sites of Mecca, Medina and the surrounding area" (In the Holy Land. Nineteenth-century photographs from the collections of the Reiss-Engelhorn Museums. Heidleberg 2008. p. 52).