CHÉRIF, Ahmed.

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Le Pélerinage de la Mecque. Rare first and only edition of this work entirely devoted to the Pilgrimage to Mecca, or hajj, with photographic illustrations of pilgrims at the holy sites.Ahmed Chérif (or Sharif) was a French-Lebanese physician at the Beirut Quarantine Hospital. Pélerinage begins with a history of the hajj from the times before Islam, and continues with a description of the holy site in Mecca, the rituals of the hajj, and the additional visit to Jerusalem. The last chapter is devoted to hygiene and prophylaxis to prevent epidemics as a consequence of large movements of pilgrims across borders. The 1930s witnessed a surge in the number of pilgrims, and the increasing tendency for pilgrims to visit other important places for Islam, such as Jerusalem, Damascus, and Beirut, on their way back (Chantre, pp. 595-6). Consequently, the hajj became for the Ottoman authorities an even greater sanitary risk, given that epidemics of cholera and the plague had developed from the pilgrims' travels as early as the 1820s, leading to the creation of quarantine hospitals along the routes (Chiffoleau). The Beirut Quarantine Hospital, where pilgrims were hosted for free as they awaited their boat, was an important place for public health monitoring, with baths, quarantine rooms, a modern infirmary with electricity, and a modern hospital with a laboratory. Chérif considered prophylactic medicine a "fundamental question for international health policies", and provides interesting desc

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