Dubai: The Empty Quarter Gallery exhibits Snouck's rare 1885 collection of photographs from the Hajj

The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai is exhibiting an extraordinary collection of sepia-tinted images of Mecca in a bygone age. Mecca: A dangerous Adventure – Snouck Hurgronje’s early photographs 1885 exhibits the works of Dutchman Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, a nineteenth century orientalist, adventurer, scholar, possibly a spy and certainly a pioneer in multimedia journalism.

With his rare 1885 photographs and sound recordings of Mecca, Snouck documents a time ago when the eternal Ka'aba and the galleried compound which surrounds it is echoed by Mecca's contemporary architecture although the sparsely-built city of Snouck's era bears only a passing resemblance to modern-day Mecca.

Hajji tent camp at Mount Arafat, by Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje | Al-Sayyid Abd al-Ghaffar

Snouck used Thomas Edison's newly-invented wax cylinders, the exhibition paints a very different picture from the ornate and built-up Mecca familiar to modern visitors. The photographs were originally published in 1889 as Bilder aus Mekka.

A larger collection of Snouck's photography from Mecca can be found on this link.

The Empty Quarter Gallery in Dubai has teamed up with the Dutch Leiden University and Hes & De Graaf Publishers in Houten, the Netherlands, to present a unique exhibition revisiting the historical photographs.