The Holy Cities of Arabia

The first fifty-eight pages of this volume form an introduction under the heading, ‘Who was Eldon Rutter?’ William Facey, the mover behind Arabian Publishing, has made one of his tasks the rehabilitation of modern travellers to the holy places of Arabia. A previous volume, Lady Evelyn Cobbold’s Pilgrimage to Mecca, was more than successful in reviving interest in an aristocratic convert and significant figure in the now much studied early twentieth-century London Muslim community. In Eldon Rutter’s case the faith issue is less easily clarified. In his recent Mecca: The Sacred City, Ziauddin Sardar considers Rutter a spy, though the present editors find no evidence of this. It seems he made formal conversion to Islam in Penang before leaving for Egypt in 1924 to undertake intensive study of Arabic in preparation for his journey to the Haramayn. Rather than dwell on the biographical details of Rutter’s life – which are ably pieced together by the two editors – the text he wrote and published repays attention. Suffice to say, The Holy Cities of Arabia was a great critical success but a commercial failure. Though its author made a second journey to Ha’il in 1929-30, he published nothing further and his fame proved as evanescent as the desert flora he on occasion describes.