8vo. xix, 259 pp., [1], portrait frontispiece, 18 halftone illustrations of which one full page in text map, a presentation copy, inscribed by the author on front endpaper, June 6th 1934, original green cloth (a few small wormholes to upper joint), title gilt on spine & in Arabic on front cover, index, endpapers a little toned, occasional light foxing to first few pages, otherwise cop in very good condition, John Murray, London, first edition, 1934.

Synopsis

Lady Evelyn Cobbold (1867-1963) was the first British woman to perform the Hajj Pilgrimage to Mecca in 1933, aged 65.
As the first British female convert to Islam on record for 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 put 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 deerstalker. Deciding to perform the pilgrimage in 1933, at the age of 66, 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 is as much an account of an interior journey of faith as a conventional travelogue. It 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 firsthand description of the life of the women’s quarters and of the households in which she stayed in Medina, Mecca and Muna – an account remarkable for its sympathy and vividness.