A Shi'ite Pilgrimage to Mecca, 1885-1886

Western accounts of the Hajj, the ritual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, are rare, since access to Mecca is forbidden to non-Muslims. In the Muslim world, however, pilgrimage literature is a well-established genre, dating back to the earliest centuries of the Islamic era. A Shiite Pilgrimage to Mecca is taken from the original nineteenth-century Persian manuscript of the Safarnmeh of Mirz Moammad osayn Farhni, a well-educated, keenly observant, Iranian Shiite gentleman. This memoir holds a wealth of social and economic information about Czarist Russia, the Ottoman Empire, Egypt, Northern Iran, and Arabia. The author is a meticulous observer, recording details of distances, currencies, accommodations, modes of travel, and so on. He records the experiences encountered by pilgrims of his day: physical hardships, disease, generosity and compassion, banditry, hospitality, comradeship, and exaltation. And, without prejudice, he discusses the tensions between the Shiites and the Sunnites in the holy placestensions that still exist and have erupted in bloody clashes during recent pilgrimages. A Shiite Pilgrimage to Mecca will appeal to a wide audience of general readers, Middle Eastern scholars, anthropologists, and historians.