Mekka is the standard scholarly work of Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje on the holy city of [[Mekka|Mekka], published in two volumes with plate-atlas at Leiden in 1888–1889, and the principal published fruit of his Mekka journey of 1884–1885. The work, which arose from the six-month residence at Mekka from 21 February 21 February 1885 to 5 August 5 August 1885 — when Snouck Hurgronje, as the Muslim convert “Abd al-Gaffār”, lived as a Muslim among the Muslims, performed the obligatory religious devotions faithfully, and gained access to city and mosque archives — is the foundational scholarly work on Mekka in the late nineteenth century and one of the principal works of nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship.
The Composition
The work was composed from the material that Snouck Hurgronje had been able to gather during his six-month residence at Mekka from 21 February 21 February 1885 to 5 August 5 August 1885. The investigation, begun under relatively favourable circumstances, could not be quietly concluded; the gathered material could not be completely taken along. The expulsion from Mekka on 5 August 5 August 1885 — through the lies of the French vice-consul De Lostalot — had cut short the investigation; Medina had had to be left unvisited; and the approaching Great Feast, which Snouck Hurgronje had hoped to celebrate at Mekka in the 12th month, had had to be abandoned.
Yet the harvest was considerable. The publication of the work in 1888–1889 — in two volumes with a plate-atlas — made Snouck Hurgronje’s name as the principal Dutch Islamicist of his generation, and the work’s enduring and unsurpassed value was testified to by the appearance, more than forty years later, in 1931, of an English translation of the second volume by Monahan. The late translation proves the enduring value of the content and how unsurpassed it has remained to this day.
The Atjèh Interest
For Snouck Hurgronje himself, however, the profit of his Mekka journey — as Damsté writes — consisted not so much in that renowned work as in the influence of his stay in the spiritual centre of Islam on all his further studies. The Djawa pilgrims — the colony at Mekka of Muslims originating from Nederlandsch-Indië — had had Abd al-Gaffār’s particular attention, witness the fourth chapter of his Mekka. Among them were also the Atjèhers. They attracted him, because they presented for the Netherlands a problem whose solution had not yet been found. Over there he had spoken much with them; and Atjèh’s “unkingsed king” from the days of the governor Van der Heijden — Sejjid Habib Abdoerrachman ez-Zahir, who had submitted against the payment of a handsome annual salary and had since resided at Mekka — had already on 8 Moharram 1302 (i.e. in October 1884, when Snouck Hurgronje had been but a few months at Djidda) given him a recept — a recipe — for how Atjèh, in the Habib’s view, was to be pacified.
Significance
Mekka is the principal published fruit of Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka journey of 1884–1885 and one of the principal works of nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship. The work, composed from the material gathered during the six-month residence at Mekka from 21 February 21 February 1885 to 5 August 5 August 1885, is the foundational scholarly work on Mekka in the late nineteenth century. The English translation of the second volume by Monahan in 1931 testifies to the enduring and unsurpassed value of the work. For Snouck Hurgronje himself, however, the principal profit of the Mekka journey lay not in the work itself but in the influence of the stay at Mekka on all his further studies — and in particular in the Atjèh interest that it awakened, and that would culminate in the Verslag of 23 May 23 May 1892 and in the publication of De Atjèhers (1893–1894).
See Also
- C. Snouck Hurgronje
- Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka journey (1884-1885)
- De Atjehers (Snouck Hurgronje)
- Verslag omtrent de religieus-politieke toestanden in Atjeh
- Habib Abdul Rachman El-Zahir
- De Lostalot
- J. A. Kruijt (consul)
- Djawa (Mekka colony)
- Mekka
- Djidda
- Medina
- Monahan
- Leiden
- Aceh War
- Atjeh-oorlog
- 8 Moharram 1302
- 21 February
- 5 August
- 1884
- 1885
- 1888
- 1889
- 1892
- 1893
- 1894
- 1931
Source
Drie Atjeh-mannen: Snouck Hurgronje — Van Heutsz — Van Daalen, door H. T. Damsté (September 1936). OCR-filename: 20260718_105749_DLP-111-Drie_Atjeh_mannen_Nemotron-OCR-v2_OCR.txt, pp. 9–10.