Exposition : “Longing for Mecca – The pilgrim’s journey”, National Museum of Ethnology, Leiden (Pays-bas), jusqu’au 09/03/2014

Come and see the unique exhibition about the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca in the National Museum of Ethnology. Never before has a Dutch museum presented an exhibition of this magnitude focusing on this impressive pilgrimage, in which millions of people from all over the world take part every year. Magnificent objects, personal stories and in-depth reports provide a comprehensive picture of this religious and ritual journey. The exhibition is a collaboration with the British Museum in London, where the exhibition Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam attracted large numbers of visitors in 2012.

Mecca

Only Muslims may enter the city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia. To others, Mecca is known only from photographs of crowds of pilgrims circling the sacred Ka’ba. Still, Mecca occupies a more prominent place in Dutch culture and history than many, perhaps, are aware. Hundreds of thousands of residents of this kingdom have made the pilgrimage in the past; from Indonesia, Suriname, and the Netherlands. Today, some 5,000 Muslims undertake the journey from the Netherlands to Mecca every year. Mecca and the pilgrimage are therefore bound up with Dutch history and culture.

The pilgrim’s journey

For a quarter of the world’s population, Mecca is the place that you must have visited once in your life. All over the world, Muslims face the holy city at prayer. The pilgrimage is undertaken by millions of believers every year. What desire, or longing, drives them to go? What trials and tribulations do they encounter, what manner of purification do they undergo? What rituals do they perform? What are their unforgettable impressions and experiences, on their journey, in Mecca itself, and after their return? On the basis of individual stories and remarkable objects, this exhibition will provide a unique, personal insight into one of the greatest spiritual, cultural and religious phenomena in the world.

Highlights

For hundreds of years, the Hajj has inspired artists and rulers to make, or commission, magnificent objects. In this exhibition, over 363 unique items have been brought together. They are enormously diverse, ranging in time from the tenth century to the present day, with origins from Indonesia to Morocco. Photographs by the Leiden scholar Snouck Hurgronje, the first European to take photographs in Mecca, display nineteenth-century pilgrims. The installation entitled Magnetism (2011) by the contemporary Saudi artist Ahmed Mater symbolises the irresistible attraction of the Ka’ba.

The exhibits come from the museum’s own collection and from over 20 museum and private collections in Europe and the Middle East. The most important lenders are the internationally renowned collections of the Nasser D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art in London and the Special Collections of the University of Leiden.

Read an article about the exhibition on islamicartsmagazine.com

Ahmed Mater, Magnetism / Courtesy of Rijksmuseum Volkenkunde

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