A History of Jeddah: The Gate to Mecca in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries - Hardcover

Freitag, Ulrike

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1108478794 ISBN 13: 9781108478793

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2020

Synopsis

Known as the 'Gate to Mecca' or 'Bride of the Red Sea', Jeddah has been a gateway for pilgrims travelling to Mecca and Medina and a station for international trade routes between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean for centuries. Seen from the perspective of its diverse population, this first biography of Jeddah traces the city's urban history and cosmopolitanism from the late Ottoman period to its present-day claim to multiculturalism, within the conservative environment of the Arabian Peninsula. Contextualising Jeddah with developments in the wider Muslim world, Ulrike Freitag investigates how different groups of migrants interacted in a changing urban space and how their economic activities influenced the political framework of the city. Richly illustrated, this study reveals how the transformation of Jeddah's urban space, population and politics has been indicative of changes in the wider Arab and Red Sea region, re-evaluating its place in the Middle East at a time when both its cosmopolitan practices and old city are changing dramatically against a backdrop of modernisation and Saudi nation-building.

About this title

About the Author

Ulrike Freitag is Director of Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient and Professor of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität, Berlin. She is author of Indian Ocean Migrants and State Formation in Hadhramaut (2002) and co-editor of several volumes on urban history, including Urban Violence in the Middle East (2015).

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108478794
• ISBN 13: 9781108478793
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 404