Snouck Hurgronje's Mekka journey (1884-1885)

Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka journey of 1884–1885 — the journey of the Dutch scholar Dr. C. Snouck Hurgronje to Djidda and Mekka from 28 August 28 August 1884 to 19 September 19 September 1885, in the course of which he lived at Mekka for six months (from 21 February 21 February 1885 to 5 August 5 August 1885) as the Muslim convert “Abd al-Gaffār”, gathering the material that would culminate in his standard work Mekka (Leiden, 1888–1889) — was the formative scholarly experience of Snouck Hurgronje’s career and the immediate source of his Atjèh interest, for it was among the Atjèhse pilgrims at Mekka that he first encountered the people whose resistance to the Dutch he would later, as advisor to the Netherlands Indies government, diagnose and prescribe the means to suppress.

The Decision to Go to Arabië

Snouck Hurgronje had, after his doctorate on 24 November 24 November 1880 on the dissertation “Het Mekkaansche Feest” and his stay at Strasbourg under Nöldeke, been appointed lector at the Leiden Indische Instelling for the training of East Indian officials, to teach what was then called “godsdienstige wetten en gewoonten der mohammedanen” (religious laws and customs of the Mohammedans). The trek to Arabië had long been on his mind; on a walk along the Leiden singels with his teacher Professor De Goeje he had once floated the idea. De Goeje had then found the idea rather foolish: in those days no orientalist went to the East. But after a couple of years of teaching at the Leiden institute, the trek to Arabië became too strong for Snouck Hurgronje, and he inquired of the secretary-general of foreign affairs whether he might be attached to the consulate at Djidda; but no, in The Hague they had no ears for that.

Then Snouck went to the consul Kruijt from Djidda, when that official was on leave at ‘s-Gravenhage; and that visit was a success: Kruijt would help the young scholar; he would introduce him at Djidda. Also Professor Van der Lith at Leiden promised his help: he would, during Snouck’s absence in Arabië, take over his courses at the Indische Instelling. The required leave was requested and obtained; and when Mr. Kruijt returned to his unhealthy station, Snouck Hurgronje travelled with him.

The Arrival at Djidda (28 August 1884)

On 28 August 28 August 1884 Snouck Hurgronje arrived at Djidda. He was soon invited to become a member of a society for the maintenance of a cemetery for non-Mohammedans — the only European society that, as a curiosity, existed at Djidda. But Snouck wished to live at Djidda as a Mohammedan, and not to be buried as a non-Mohammedan. Europeans too, he thought, could live at Djidda, provided they observed regularity in conduct; but the climate was unclean, the air very humid, and the atmosphere at great heat extremely oppressive. If there were no Mekka behind Djidda, no one would ever have chosen Djidda as dwelling or even as halting-place.

Snouck Hurgronje stayed at Djidda a little half-year, and spent his time acquiring the local spoken Arabic. He also established Mekkan relations, and studied from afar, as well as could be done, the conditions and relations within the holy city; and his attention was especially directed to the Djawa — the colony at Mekka of Muslims originating from Nederlandsch-Indië. Photographs were made of groups of pilgrims from diverse lands. And finally preparations had to be made for the journey to Mekka, if it should come to that; if that should be allowed to succeed!

The Atjèh Interest at Djidda

Already at Djidda, in the first months of his stay, Snouck Hurgronje’s Atjèh interest was awakened. The Atjèhse pilgrims were among the Djawa who attracted his particular attention; and Habib Abdoerrachman ez-Zahir — Atjèh’s “unkingsed king” from the days of the governor Van der Heijden, who had submitted against the payment of a handsome annual salary and had since resided at Mekka — provided Snouck Hurgronje, already on 8 Moharram 1302 (i.e. in October 1884, when Snouck Hurgronje had been but a few months at Djidda), with an Arabic-language recept — a recipe — for how Atjèh, in the Habib’s view, was to be pacified. The Habib’s recept would, in 1888, be among the materials that Snouck Hurgronje would offer to the minister Keuchenius to advise on Atjèh.

The Journey to Mekka (21-23 February 1885)

And it succeeded! When they heard at Leiden of it, De Goeje became seriously anxious about his reckless pupil, and wrote to him in disapproval, but well knowing that it would avail nothing, that Snouck would not let himself be stopped.

On 21 February 21 February 1885, towards evening, the journey from Djidda to the East, to Mekka, was begun. Three camels carried the baggage; a fourth “ship of the desert” was passenger-boat, with cabins along the side at both boards: one for Abd al-Gaffār (as Snouck Hurgronje had come to call himself), and one for his Javanese travelling companion. The way climbed continuously, and at great intervals gendarme-posts were passed — sixteen in all, dividing the Djidda-Mekka route in approximately equal stretches. Two of those posts were also villages: Bahra, passed after ten hours’ walking, and Hadda, where one arrived at four o’clock in the morning. There at Hadda passers-by were accustomed to pause, until the heat of the day had abated.

But Snouck Hurgronje was not yet so completely Abd al-Gaffār that he could patiently sit and wait until the sun should moderate itself in the late afternoon. He wanted to go on, and with much effort he succeeded in getting his caravan moving already at eight o’clock. A couple of hours later he saw to the right rise the grey mountain from which the Mekkans hew the stones for their mosques and notable buildings. At two o’clock, after passing a boundary stone, the territory entered was the Holy Territory: the Haram. The climb became steeper, the way stonier and more enclosed between the mountains. Shortly before sunset (23 February) the crossroads was reached where the Mekka-goer has to choose between a way-over and a path-below; and along that path-below, at seven o’clock, the destination was reached: the holy city Mekka.

The Six Months at Mekka (21 February – 5 August 1885)

Snouck Hurgronje lived at Mekka as a Muslim among the Muslims. He performed the obligatory religious devotions faithfully with them, and his appearance in public commanded respect. He associated with scholars and prominent Mekkans, and gained access to city and mosque archives, from which everything was still to be harvested for science. He saw and heard how, in the international companies that constituted themselves at Mekka, politics was done, instruction given and received; how, in deviation from the Islamic ideal, the practice of the Law developed. He listened to the heartbeat of the world of Islam, and understood how it was propagated to the most distant regions, and how the consequences must locally manifest themselves.

So he studied and researched, and for six months all went according to wish. The harvest would culminate in the standard work Mekka (two volumes with plate-atlas), which appeared at Leiden in 1888–1889. More than forty years later, in 1931, an English translation of the second volume by Monahan appeared — a late translation that testifies to the enduring and unsurpassed value of the work.

The Expulsion (5 August 1885)

Then came the Temps of 5 July 5 July 1885 with a message that boded ill, if it should be taken over by the Turkish and Arab papers. And that happened, with the consequence that on 5 August 5 August 1885 Snouck Hurgronje was given the notice that he had to leave Mekka immediately. Only a few hours were granted him to pack his trunks; and then the journey went back to Djidda, under the guidance of two Turkish police-soldiers.

What had happened? In 1883 Professor Euting from Strasbourg and a French Dr. Huber had made a scientific journey in the interior of Arabië, and had long been guests of the emir Ibn Rasjid in his territory. Leaving their goods, among which a gravestone with old-Syriac inscription — the later famous stele of Teima — they had departed thence; first Euting and then Huber, by different routes. Euting reached the harbour-place el-Wedj, but had to kill some men to be able to arrive there alive. Huber had it easier: without incident he succeeded in reaching Djidda. But although the authorities dissuaded and even forbade him, he left Djidda to enter the interior again; and that venture cost him his life.

The Lies of De Lostalot

The report that Dr. Huber had been murdered was received at Djidda shortly before the arrival there of Dr. Snouck Hurgronje together with the Dutch consul Kruijt in August 1884. France was in those days not fully represented at Djidda. The vice-consul was on leave, and the first drogman — also a Frenchman — performed the office. Formerly, under similar circumstances, the Dutch consul Kruijt had often attended to the French interests; but now Kruijt too had been absent. Only in October did the vice-consul De Lostalot return to Djidda, and then France was, though fuller, yet worse represented!

That vice-consul received orders from his government to ensure that the goods of Huber, which had been left with his host Ibn Rasjid at Haïl, should find their way to Paris — intended was above all the stele of Teima, whose text had in the meantime, from Professor Euting’s drawing, been deciphered by Nöldeke, and which had thereby become famous. The stone was won for France; but that was not the merit of De Lostalot! De Lostalot was a man of small mind, but who wished to be held for a clever fellow; and to that end he fabricated for Snouck Hurgronje all the most dangerous fantasies. On the stone had been hunted, from Damascus by Professor Euting, from Mekka “par un autre savant du nom de docteur Snouck Busyrouse (read: Hurgronje), portant le nom d’Abdul-Gaffar depuis sa conversion à l’islam”, from all sides by the Ottoman government, which, as a consequence of the indiscretions of that pair of scholars, had sought to make itself master of it. But he, De Lostalot, had secured the prize!

With that untrue representation of matters, which found its way first into the French and later also into the Turkish and Arab press, he broke his promise, given to Snouck Hurgronje before the latter’s departure from Djidda to Mekka, to keep his residence at Mekka secret from Europe; and, rubbing him with archaeological ambitions, he brought him into great life-danger. A “Frank” who gathers science of the Holy Law can be respected as a pious Muslim; but a Frank who takes interest in old stones is surely an unholy merchant, if not a treacherous spy. So a small mind and a small understanding, in unfaithfulness and vanity, brought about the premature end of Snouck Hurgronje’s scientific exploratory journey.

The Departure (19 September 1885)

The investigation, begun under relatively favourable circumstances, could not be quietly concluded; the gathered material could not be completely taken along. Medina had to be left unvisited; and the approaching Great Feast, which he, after residing at Mekka from the 5th to the 9th month, had hoped to celebrate there in the 12th month? That had to be abandoned. After the lies of De Lostalot had also worked through in the Arab press, return to Mekka was no longer possible, even if the Turkish authorities had in the meantime come to better insight.

On 19 September 19 September 1885 Snouck Hurgronje went aboard, to return to Europe. “De ironie van het door Allah vooruit bepaalde lot” (the irony of the fate predetermined by Allah), as Snouck himself wrote, caused that day — the day the boat left the Arab coast — to coincide with the great feast-day of the pilgrims, with the Mekka Feast, on which Snouck’s dissertation had treated.

Significance

Snouck Hurgronje’s Mekka journey of 1884–1885 is the formative scholarly experience of his career and the immediate source of his Atjèh interest. The six months at Mekka — spent in scientific commerce with Muslim scholars, in the study of the city and mosque archives, and in the observation of the international companies that constituted themselves at Mekka — gave Snouck Hurgronje the knowledge of Islam in its geographical and spiritual centre that would inform all his subsequent work. The Atjèhse pilgrims whom he met at Mekka — and above all the Habib Abdoerrachman ez-Zahir, who provided him with the recept for the pacification of Atjèh in October 1884 — were the immediate occasion of his Atjèh interest, which would culminate in his Verslag of 23 May 23 May 1892 and in the publication of De Atjèhers (1893–1894). The journey’s end — the expulsion from Mekka on 5 August 5 August 1885, through the lies of the French vice-consul De Lostalot — is one of the dramatic episodes of nineteenth-century Orientalist scholarship, and the ironie van het door Allah vooruit bepaalde lot by which the boat’s departure coincided with the Mekka Feast is one of its characteristic ironies.

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. 4–11.

tags	event, dutch, scholarly, religious, snouck-hurgronje, 19th-century, mekka, djidda, abd-al-gaffar, arabia
aliases	Snouck Hurgronje's Mekka journey (1884-1885), Snouck Hurgronje Mekka journey, Snouck Mekka, Abd al-Gaffar Mekka, Snouck Hurgronje's residence at Mekka

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