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The Date of Pitts's Pilgrimage to Mecca

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Extract

The date of Joseph Pitts's visit to Mecca, the first known to have been made by an Englishman, has not been satisfactorily determined hitherto. It appears from his own book that he was captured by Algerine pirates in 1678. Cruel treatment at length drove him to profess Islam. His third master took him on pilgrimage to Mecca and there gave him his freedom. Some time must have elapsed before this happened, for Pitts states: “I remain'd several Years a Slave after my Defection.” The next date he mentions is 1688, when he was at the siege of Oran.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1950

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References

page 112 note 1 Pitts, J., A Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahometans, 1731, p. 183Google Scholar. This is the third and definitive edition.

page 112 note 2 “Joseph Pitts of Exeter,” printed in Report and Transactions of the Devonshire Association, vol. 52.

page 112 note 3 Pitts, ibid., p. 94.

page 112 note 4 Ibid., p. 127.

page 112 note 5 The Red Sea and Adjacent Countries at the close of the Seventeenth Century, Hakluyt Society, second series, no. C, 1949, p. xi.

page 112 note 6 Pitts, ibid., p. 214.

page 112 note 7 Ibid., p. 172.

page 113 note 1 Ibid., pp. 209, 210, and Mercier, Ernest, Histoire de l'Afrique septentrionale, 18881891, tom. 3, pp. 293306Google Scholar.

page 113 note 2 Pitts, ibid., p. 218.

page 113 note 3 Ibid., p. 83.

page 113 note 4 Ibid., p. 142.

page 113 note 5 Ibid., p. 159.

page 113 note 6 Cambridge University Library, MS. Qq 183, fol. 113, recto.

page 113 note 7 Pitt's ibid., p. 159.