Sa'oudi, Muhammad 'Ali Effendi.

A unique collection of rare photographs, photographic equipment and related books and manuscripts by or belonging to the photographer Muhammad 'Ali Effendi Sa'oudi, consisting of:

photograph album, comprising 114 fine photographs on 51 sheets, tissue guards, modern green cloth, upper cover with Sa'oudi's arabic signature mounted; (a full list of the photographs in this album and of the slides below is available from the Book Department on request)

10 boxes of glass stereoscope slides, containing a total of 88 slides, (64 at  60 x 60mm. and 24 at 45 x 45mm.), featuring images of Makkah and Madinah, housed in original light brown leather carrying case; together with a modern album containing a complete set of prints of the slides, bound in green cloth

80 stereoscopic photographs, mounted on card (80 x 80mm.), principally featuring images of Makkah and Madinah, preserved in a modern green cloth box

sa'oudi's stereoscopic camera, an ICA AKT-GBS Dresden Stereo Palmos with a Tessar Carl Zeiss Jena lens 1:4.5 F=85mm, (see Le Guide Michel Auer, Edition Camera Obscura, 1990, No.2184); together with: an ICA AKT-GBS Dresden wooden stereoscope for viewing slides (damaged); housed together in a wooden box



manuscript translation, by, or commissioned by, Sa'oudi of J.L. Burckhardt's Travels in Arabia (1829), 116pp. manuscript in arabic, not in Sa'oudi's hand, tables of contents and red ink annotations in the hand of sa'oudi. The translation covers only Burckhardt's chapters on Makkah and Madinah and was never published. we have been unable to trace any arabic translation of burckhardt until that of hitaf abdallah, published in beirut in 2005



sa'oudi, muhammad 'ali effendi, 'A Synopsis of the Pilgrimage', manuscript in arabic [1904], 12pp. with official watermark on each page: crescent and three stars with "Gouvernement Egyptien", written in Sa'oudi's own hand after his first pilgrimage for the noted teacher and Islamic reformer Muhammad Abduh (1849-1905)



sa'oudi, muhammad 'ali effendi, 'The Construction of the Ka'ba', manuscript in arabic [post 1905], 8pp. with official watermark on each page: crescent and three stars with "Gouvernement Egyptien", written in Sa'oudi's own hand



sa'oudi, muhammed 'ali effendi, Voyages au Hedjaz et en Arabie, (Cairo: Imprimerie de L'Institut Francais d'Archeologie Orientale, 1919), extracted from the Bulletin de la Societe Sultanieh de Geographie, New Series T.VIII, text in Arabic and French, some additions in Arabic by the author in red ink, included is a modern English translation, housed in a green cloth box

rif'at pasha, ibrahim. Mir'at Al Haramayn Aw Al Rihlat Al Hijaziyya. (Cairo, 1925), first edition, sa'oudi's own copy, 2 volumes, 8vo, (514pp. and 369pp.), 557 photographic and other illustrations, a detailed description of the author's four journeys to Makkah and Madinah between 1901 and 1908. In 1904 and 1908 he was accompanied by Sa'oudi who certainly took the photographs labelled figures 39, 54,141, 145, 146, [162], [174], 201, 240 and 289 in the book, and who may have taken twenty others in which Rif'at appears but Sa'oudi does not. There is a studio portrait of Sa'oudi on p.321 of Volume 2, and he appears in eight other photographs in the book



shehata, riyad. Al Tasweer wal Hafr. (Cairo, 1924), 8vo, 226pp., original printed wrappers, a manual on photography; on p.31 is described and illustrated a Dresden camera similar to Sa'oudi's. Shehata was court photographer during the reign of King Farouk

Muhammad 'Ali Effendi Sa'oudi and by descent through his family

Rif'at Pasha, Ibrahim. Mirat al Harameyn, (Cairo, 1925), 2 volumes (Sa'oudi's own copy of which is included in this collection); Facey, W. and G. Grant. Saudi Arabia by the first photographers, (London, 1996); Facey, W. and G. Grant. Al Tourath (2nd ed., 1996); Al Hagge, Badr. Images from the past: Saudi Arabia. (London, 1989); Al Makki, M. T. al Kordi. Al Tarikh Al Kaweem Li Makkah wa Beit Allah Al Karim (Beirut, 2000); King Fahd National Library. Historic Pictures of Saudi Arabia: an index (Riyad, 1999)

On 13 May 1919 the members of the Sultanieh Geographical Society in Cairo were addressed by a middle-aged civil servant who, equipped with a slide projector, proceeded to transport his audience to a world that, even after the First World War, was largely closed to outsiders. The speaker and his slides told an eloquent story of a country about to be propelled to unbelievable wealth and renown and of religious sites still largely unknown outside its borders. The story was an account of two pilgrimages to the Muslim Holy cities the speaker had made in 1904 and 1908. The speaker was Muhammad 'Ali Effendi Sa'oudi.

Muhammad 'Ali Effendi Sa'oudi (1865-1955) was attached to the Ministry of Justice in Cairo and specialised in the identification of forged documents. His enthusiasm for photography was useful in his vocation, but found its most lasting expression in the collection of photographs taken on the pilgrimages on which he was accompanying General Ibrahim Rif'at Pasha, whose well-known and lavishly illustrated account of these journeys was published in 1925. sa'oudi's contribution to this book, as well as his photographic skill and literary output, has never been fully revealed heretofore.

Sa'oudi was traversing and recording Arabia in momentous times. Only a couple of years previously 'Abd al-'Aziz, known in the West as Ibn Saud, had recaptured Riyadh for the House of Saud, triggering a chain of events that would ultimately lead to the proclamation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932.

At the start of his address Sa'oudi painted a picture of a country with a forbidding climate and exceedingly inhospitable terrain that meant that the area was virtually closed to all but the most intrepid of outsiders. Sa'oudi compares himself with the explorer Richard Burton who first visited Makkah and Madinah, in disguise, in 1853. In actuality, Sa'oudi had more in common with Muhammad Sadiq Bey (1832-1902), an Egyptian colonel and engineer, who took the first photographs of Madinah (1861) and Makkah (1880) and who with justification boasted that "no one before me has ever taken such photographs". The importance of his work was recognised when his original photographs of Makkah sold in these rooms in 1998 (4 June, lot 328) for a world record £1.25million.

Sa'oudi showed 141 photographs that day (a break was required after 70 photographs or so to allow the projector to cool down) and it is evident from the recorded reaction of his audience, which included such luminaries as Prince Ahmed Fouad (King of Egypt 1922 - 1936), that the importance of Sa'oudi's photographs was instantly recognised.

The collection is extraordinarily wide-ranging, including iconic images of Al Haram Mosque in Makkah, including internal shots with the Ka'ba and Zam Zam, and the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah alongside records of archaeological sites and intimate photographs of groups and individuals, including several shots of the nine year old al Rashid who was to be tenth Emir from 1910 until his assassination in 1920.

Sa'oudi captured his images with a stereographic camera that produced pairs of images to be viewed through a stereoscope. The camera's lenses were about 245mm. apart, roughly corresponding to the distance between the pupils. The resulting, slightly different, images were mounted and viewed through a stereoscope whereby the viewer sees a three-dimensional image.

Although General Rif'at Pasha, largely due to his book Mir'at Al Haramayn, has the reputation as perhaps the most familiar photographer of the Holy Cities and sites of his age, this archive advances the claims of his lesser-known travelling companion. For whenever we have a photograph of the same scene from similar angles in the current collection as one that appears in Mir'at Al Haramayn, it is Sa'oudi's version that is consistently superior both technically and aesthetically. Thus Muhammad 'Ali Effendi Sa'oudi, whose own photographs, it is now revealed, went before the public some six years before the General's, emerges from the shadows as a man who brought the natural and architectural splendour of the future Saudi Arabia to a wider audience just as the Kingdom was reaching pre-eminence.