A Princess's Pilgrimage

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In 1870, Nawab Sikander Begum of Bhopal became the first South-Asian Muslim woman to publish an account of her pilgrimage to Mecca. She travelled with a retinue of a thousand, visited Jeddah and Mecca, performed the requisite rituals and observances, then returned to India and wrote her witty and acerbic impressions of her visit. Reproduced here, A Princesss Pilgrimage to Mecca is the original English translation by the wife of British colonial officer of an unpublished Urdu manuscript. It is accompanied by a critical Introduction and Afterword that make this offering a comprehensive resource on trvael writing by South-Asian Muslim women, and encourage the reader- whether scholar, student or enthusiast to rethink established understandings relating to travel writing colonialism and world history.

Author Bio

Siobhan Lambert-Hurley is Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Nottingham Trent University in the United Kingdom. Her research focuses on women, gender and Islam in South Asia with a particular emphasis on education, social and political organisations, the culture of travel, missionaries and autobiographical narratives. Her other publications include Muslim Women, Reform and Princely Patronage: Nawab Sultan Jahan Begam of Bhopal (2007) and Rhetoric and Reality: Gender and the Colonial Experience in South Asia (co-edited with Avril A. Powell, 2006).