| In late 1877, John Fryer Thomas Keane set out on a journey few Christian Europeans had attempted---completing the h&dotbelow;ajj, or pilgrimage, to Mecca. While some Europeans had undertaken this pilgrimage as Muslims, Keane donned the guise of an Indian Muslim instead of converting to Islam outright. From the h&dotbelow;ajj of Italian Ludovico di Varthema in the early sixteenth century to the nineteenth century travels of Englishmen Sir Richard F. Burton and John Lewis Burkhardt, a select few Westerners embarked upon h&dotbelow;ajj disguised as Muslims in order to reveal the nature of this restricted Islamic ritual practice. After completion of his h&dotbelow;ajj, Keane detailed his journey in a two-volume set. Given his youth and general lack of experience, Keane stands out as a unique, and understudied, traveler among England's nineteenth century disguised h&dotbelow;ajjis. He represented a new form of non-Muslim h&dotbelow;ajji, that of the tourist, who performed the pilgrimage, not out of any academic or imperial needs or wants, but for their own personal enlightenment, adventure, or gain. His h&dotbelow;ajj also demonstrates the growing global interconnectedness of the late nineteenth century. In this thesis, I outline how studying Keane affects our understanding of late nineteenth century Western exploration in Arabia. |
