BAROIS (Jean)

BAROIS (Jean)

La Mecque ville interdite, Editions Corrêa, Paris, 1938

In-12, bound in black half-basane, smooth spine with gilt title and author's note, 162 pages. Frontispiece portrait, 5 photographic representations including 1 of the young King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud. Account of a French convert's pilgrimage to Mecca in 1936. First published as a series of sensational articles over ten days in the Paris-Soir newspaper from April 1936. He managed to photograph the holy places. The publication of these images in the newspaper was a first for a European reader, and they appear to be the first photographs of Mecca reproduced in a European newspaper. In this way, he introduced readers to the stages of the pilgrimage and gave them an insight into daily life in Mecca and Medina in the 1930s. Jean Barois (20th century), French journalist close to the intellectual circles of Cocteau and Gide. His report on Mecca, from which his book "La Mecque ville interdite" is drawn, brought him success. We may doubt his conversion, but his report is quite authentic, following in the footsteps of 19th-century adventurers such as Burckhardt and de Maltzan.