Adventurer's Photos Capture a Bygone Mecca

November 18, 2010

Author: Barry Neild

Source: CNN News

http://www.cnn.com/2010/WORLD/meast/11/11/mecca.hajj.snouck/

He was an adventurer, a scholar, and possibly a spy -- but as Dutchman Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje proved with his rare 1885 photographs and sound recordings of Mecca, he was also a pioneering multimedia journalist.

 

Snouck's extraordinary collection of sepia-tinted images of Mecca in a bygone age have gone on display in Dubai ahead of the annual Hajj pilgrimage that originally drew him to the heart of Islam.