Mecca (Hardcover)

by F. E. Peters (Author) "WE CAN WRITE no history of Mecca in the centuries before Muhammad, during what the later Muslim authories called "The Barbarism" or "The Ignorance" (jahiliyya)..." (more)
Key Phrases: food against hunger, wadi bottom, one arcade, Red Sea, Ibn Ishaq, Ali Bey (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal
To most Westerners, the sacred Islamic cities of Mecca and Medina and their surrounding haram (the area off-limits to non-Muslims) are exotic, hidden places. We know that they are the destinations of the great annual pilgrimage called the hajj-but what else do we know? Thoroughly researched and clearly presented, this work goes far toward enlightening us. So far as Peters (Near Eastern languages, New York Univ.) has been able to discover, there has been no archaeology done in the region at all. So he has perforce gathered strictly literary evidence from a wide range of writings, both Islamic and Western, including national archives, travelogs, histories, and private journals. Full of informative detail, and with substantial notes and bibliography, his work is a true scholar's guidebook to further study and not for casual readers. Recommended for academic libraries and public libraries with large collections in history and Islamic affairs.
James F. Deroche, Alexandria, Va.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
The author ... has sought to assemble, arrange, and explain the accounts of Muslims as well as non-Muslims--from sincere to fraudulent--about the Holy Land.... F. E. Peters has definitely succeeded in accomplishing his goal.... [He] has definitely done an outstanding job of explaining the accounts of various travelers to the Holy Land. -- Review

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 504 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 31, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 069103267X
• ISBN-13: 978-0691032672
• Product Dimensions: 9.6 x 6.6 x 1.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #839,407 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #9 in

  Books > Religion & Spirituality > Islam > Mecca

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Rule of thumb, May 28, 2005

By	Joe Schmoe "MeLove2Read" (Jersey City, New Jersey United States) - See all my reviews

Whenever Daniel Pipes gives a low rating....the book is well worth the read.

Nothing ever written positively about Islam is digestable to this man, which is why he was canned from the Institute of Peace. Just read what his colleagues wrote about his phobias.


buy the book!!

1 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mecca, July 22, 2001

By	Daniel Pipes, Middle East Forum, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, PA) - See all my reviews

"Mecca" is a companion volume to Peters' earlier 1994 study, "The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places" (reviewed in Middle East Quarterly, September 1994). That book focuses on the experience of the pilgrimage, in Mecca and outside it; this one focuses on the geography and history of what Peters calls "the Muslim Holy Land," by which he means "Mecca and Medina and their spiritual environs." "Literary history" points to the fact that there is little or no material evidence for Islam's holy cities before 1925, this book's cut-off date, compelling the researcher to rely almost exlusively on written sources.

As in the earlier volume, Peters mixes his own scholarly findings here with long excerpts from primary sources, both Muslim and Western. Rather than impose his own schema on the materials at hand, he follows their vagaries, jumping from the early centuries of Islam to the Age of Discovery with only a few pages on the intervening centuries. The result is an unusual but highly successful mix of literary collage with academic inquiry. Subjects especially worth noting include the account of the Qarmatians' conquest of Mecca in 930 and their stealing of the Black Stone; the story of Thomas Keith, a Scotsman taken prisoner by the Ottoman forces who converted to Islam and eventually became governor of Medina in 1815; and late nineteenth-century British musings about the recruitment of spies to keep an eye on possible seditious activity during the pilgrimage activities in Mecca.

Middle East Quarterly, March 1995