
The Holy Cities of Arabia
Caroline Stone
Eldon Rutter. William Facey and Sharon Sharpe, intro.
2015, Arabian Publishing, 978-0-99298-082-5, £40 hb.
On its publication in 1928, The Holy Cities of Arabia was much admired, but since then it has been almost completely neglected. It is a pleasure to have it available again in a new edition. Not only does Eldon Rutter provide probably the best description of Makkah and Madinah written by a European, but he was in Arabia at a particularly significant moment: 1925–26. This was the time that Abdulaziz Al Sa‘ud brought the Hijaz region of the western Peninsula into his realm and Rutter—who had embraced Islam in Malaysia where worked after serving in the British Army in the Middle East in World War I—met him on several occasions. Fluent in Arabic, Rutter immersed himself in traditional life in the Holy Cities, providing a vivid picture of the people and customs there. His book is therefore an important historical resource as well as a fascinating travel account. The introduction does an excellent job of tracing Rutter’s tangled life, a story almost as intriguing as the one he himself tells. There are useful maps, interesting photographs—the fruit of much research—as well as full notes, bibliography and appendices.
You may also be interested in...
British Museum Curator Takes Readers on Journey Spanning 6,000 Years
Southeast Asia curator Alexandra Green takes readers on a journey spanning 6,000 years, highlighting objects from Neolithic stone tools to contemporary paintings.Omani Author Zahran Alqasmi's Story About Life, Land and Honey
In his third novel, about a beekeeper living in Oman’s mountainous interior, local author Zahran Alqasmi grapples with a changing landscape around him.British Library’s 500-Year-Old Nizami Manuscripts Shed Light on Power of Art and Poetry in 12th-Century Herat
Persian and Mughal scholar and specialist Barbara Brend presents a comprehensive study of one of the most highly esteemed works of Persian Literature.