Book Description

Christians at Mecca is a collection of narratives summarizing the journeys undertaken by 16 European travelers to the Muslim holy city, starting with Ludovico di Varthema, who visited in 1503, and ending with Jules Gervais-Courtellemont, who visited in 1894. The list also includes Vincent Le Blanc (1568), Johann Wild (1607), Joseph Pitts (1680), Domingo Badia y Leblich (also called Ali Bey, 1807), Ulrich Jasper Seetzen (1809-10), Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1814-15), Giovanni Finati (1814), Léon Roches (1841-42), Georg August Wallin (1845), Sir Richard Burton (1853), Heinrich, Freiherr von Maltzan (1860), Herman Bicknell (1862), John Fryer Keane (1877-78), and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1885). Accounts of the exploration of Arabia and Islam's "forbidden cities" became a genre that aroused considerable interest in Europe, especially during the 19th century. Christians at Mecca is a particularly useful volume, in that it summarizes and compiles nearly all such accounts in one work. The author, Augustus Ralli, wrote in the brief preface that he intended to "give a narrative of each pilgrim's adventures, and a summary of his observation of the people of Mecca and the condition of the city." Little is known about Ralli. It is unclear if he was related to the London-based Ralli Brothers, a successful Victorian-era merchant family of Greek origins. A scholar by the same name was born in London in 1875 and died in Bath in southwest England in 1954 and is thought to have written a number of books including Guide to Carlyle and A History of Shakespearian Criticism.