'Great Journeys' allows readers to travel both around the planet and back through the centuries and also back into ideas and worlds frightening, ruthless and cruel in different ways from our own. It describes great civilisations, walls of ice, violent jungles, deserts and mountains and multitudes of birds and flowers new to science. This title is a classic in 19th century exploration of Arabian culture.

Moroccan scholar Abdellah Hammoudi takes a pilgrimage to Mecca to observe the Hajj as an anthropologist and as an ordinary pilgrim, and to write about it for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Here is his intimate, intense, and detailed account.