The Holy Cities of Arabia.

FIRST EDITION. 2 vols. 8vo. (23 x 15 cm). pp.xv+303+[1, colophon]; vii+288. Publishers' original dark green cloth, spines and upper covers lettered in gilt, front covers of each volume bearing prominent gilt Arabic script ('Mecca' and 'Medina'), top edges gilt. Photographic frontispiece to both volumes, and 8 maps: 1) Mecca (double-page), 2) The Road between Mekka and 'Arafa, 3) The Haram of Mekka, 4) Roads Connecting Mekka with Et-Tâif, 5) Et-Tâif, 6) El Medina (double-page), 7) The Haram of El Medina, and 8) Arabia showing the Author's Route. Some light spotting to edges and the odd leaf, generally an excellent set. Few British explorers in Arabia have produced books whose importance as travelogues is transcended by their literary quality. One such is The Holy Cities of Arabia, first published to critical acclaim in 1928 (no less than Percy Cox hailed it as a "first-class piece of work"), with its author being hailed as a worthy successor to Burckhardt, Burton and Doughty. Unrivalled among works by Western travellers to Islam's holy cities, this account of a pilgrimage to Mecca in 192526 is made all the more remarkable by its author's timing: in 1925 'Abd al-'Aziz Ibn Saud brought to an end centuries of rule over the Hijaz by the Hashimite sharifs and their Ottoman overlords. Rutter, living as a learned Muslim Arab in a Meccan household, had a ringside seat as Riyadh imposed its writ on Islam's holy cities. As striking as his account of life in Mecca before modernisation are his interviews with Ibn Saud, and his journeys to al-Ta'if and to the City of the Prophet, al-Madinah. The Holy Cities of Arabia proved to be its author's only full-length work and, after a brief career as a Middle East traveller, Rutter lapsed into obscurity. The Geographical Journal, "An Englishman in Mecca" (review by Percy Cox), Vol. 73, No. 5 (May, 1929), pp. 460-463.…