A Pilgrimage to Mecca

Author:Siobhan Lambert Hurley
ISBN:8188965383/2007/HB/xii+180pp/
Price:INR350/$13.00
Publisher:Women Unlimited-Delhi

About the Book
In 1870, Nawab Sikandar Begum of Begum of Bhopal was the first Muslim woman to write an account of her Haji pilgrimage to Mecca. She traveled with a retinue of a thousand, visited Jeddah and Mecca and performed the requisite rituals and observances. Her witty and acerbic impressions provide a unique insight into her complex personality as she negotiated with the colonial power, her fellow Indians and her South and West Asian co-religionists to craft an image of herself as an effective administrator, a loyal subject and a good Muslim. Reproduced here is the original English translation of her unpublished Urdu manuscript by the wife of a British colonial officer. The critical Introduction and Afterward makes this a comprehensive resource on travel writing by South Asian Muslim women, and encourages rethink of established understanding of travel writing, colonialism and world history.

Review/s
Readers interested in a very wide range of subjects, including Indian History, Muslim women, and Islam in the colonial period, will welcome this book. –Barbara D. Metcalf, Alice Freeman Palmer, Professor of History, University of Michigan.

[The] thoughtful and carefully plotted introduction…[enunciates] the limits and possibilities of travel for an elite Muslim woman in the colonial world. This is a must-read for students of gender, imperial, post-colonial and Middle Eastern histories.—Antoinette Burton, Professor and Chair, Department of History, University of Illinois.

…one of the first such published accounts by a South Asian woman.…the Begum’s account…is an engaging one, well told and translated. [The] lengthy introduction becomes invaluable.  Lambert-Hurley thus an excellent job of placing Begum in her time.–Omair Ahmed in Tehelka.

[This is] the original English translation of 1869 vintage…of an unpublished Urdu manuscript—The Hindu.

About the Author
Siobhan Lambert –Hurley is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Nottingham Trent University, U.K. Her research focuses on women, gender and Islam in South Asia. Her other publications include Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begum of Bhopal (2007) and Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia (co-edited with Avril A. Powell, 2006).