Pilgrimage to Mecca

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Pilgrimage to Mecca, as much an account of an interior journey of faith as a conventional travelogue, takes the form of a day-by-day journal interspersed with digressions on the history and merits of Islam.

£20.00

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ISBN 9780955889431 Categories: , Tag:

As the first British woman convert to Islam on record as making the pilgrimage to Mecca and visiting Medina, Lady Evelyn Cobbold (1867–1963) cuts a unique figure in the annals of the Muslim Hajj.

Anglo-Scottish aristocrat and landowner, Evelyn Murray had spent childhood winters in North Africa. There she had been imbued with the Muslim way of life, becoming, as she puts it, “a little Muslim at heart”. While travelling widely as an adult in the Arab world, she also maintained a conventional place in society at home, marrying the wealthy John Cobbold in 1891 and devoting herself to her Suffolk and London houses and her Scottish estate, where she became a renowned deer-stalker.

Deciding to perform the pilgrimage in 1933, at the age of 65, she stayed with the Philbys in Jeddah while awaiting permission to go to Mecca, and received visits from various dignitaries, notably the King’s son the Amir Faysal (later King Faysal).

Pilgrimage to Mecca, as much an account of an interior journey of faith as a conventional travelogue, takes the form of a day-by-day journal interspersed with digressions on the history and merits of Islam. She is the first English writer to give a first-hand description of the life of the women’s quarters of the households in which she stayed in Medina, Mecca and Muna – an account remarkable for its sympathy and vividness. This paperback edition, with a substantial biographical introduction by William Facey and Miranda Taylor, serves to rescue this unique and intriguing Anglo-Muslim from the obscurity that has since befallen her.

 

Authors

  • Lady Evelyn Cobbold

    Zainab Cobbold (born Evelyn Murray) was a Scottish noblewoman and convert to Islam. Born in Edinburgh in 1867, she was the eldest daughter of Charles Adolphus Murray, 7th Earl of Dunmore and Lady Gertrude Coke, daughter of the Second Earl of Leicester. Cobbold spent much of her childhood in Algiers and Cairo in the company of Muslim nannies. She considered herself a Muslim from a young age despite not officially professing her faith until she met the pope. Evelyn achieved celebrity at age 65, in 1933, when she became the first Muslim woman born in Britain to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca. In 1934, a personal account of her trip was published entitled Pilgrimage to Mecca.

  • William Facey

    William Facey is a historian and museum planner. Since 1974 he has been involved in many heritage projects in the Middle East, especially in Saudi Arabia. His books, introductions and articles cover the history, architecture and early photography of the Arabian Peninsula countries, as well as Arab maritime history, Islam among the British, and Western travellers in Arabia, particularly those visiting Islam’s holy cities. He established Arabian Publishing Ltd in London in 2002, and in 2006 became a founding trustee of the British Foundation for the Study of Arabia (BFSA), now IASA, the International Association for the Study of Arabia.