A Photographer on the Hajj: The Travels of Muhammad 'Ali Effendi Sa'udi (1904/1908)

One of the earliest visual records of the Hajj and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina

The diaries of Muhammad ‘Ali Effendi Sa‘udi, a civil servant and accomplished photographer, offer a rare glimpse of the Hajj through Egyptian eyes at the beginning of the twentieth century when the Ottoman Empire was on the wane and the advance of the Hijaz railway threatened to upset vested interests in the old pattern of pilgrimage.

Sa‘udi twice accompanied the Amir al-Hajj, Ibrahim Rif‘at Pasha, attached...