Dutch photos of 19th century Mecca discovered | Radio Netherlands Worldwide

Never-before seen photographs of Mecca in the late 1800s have been published in a new collection by the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam. The photos were taken by the Dutch scientist Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, one of the first Westerners to visit Mecca.

At the time, Westerners were strictly forbidden. The only westerners who had managed to visit the holy city had done so in disguise. Mr Snouck Hurgronje, however, had converted to Islam and so was allowed to visit. His Muslim name was Abd al-Ghaffar.

Dutch East Indies
It remains unclear whether Mr Snouck Hurgronje was actually a practicing Muslim, but he was certainly one of the first to realize that it was important to understand more about Islam. At the time this was important because the Dutch East Indies - now Indonesia - was both Islamic and a significant colony of the Netherlands.

The book
The book, by Durkje van der Wal, includes a series of six photographs - all made ​​with a tiny hidden camera. Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, The First Western Photographer in Mecca, 1884-1885 is part of the series 'Museum Studies in Photography'.