The Holiest Place Depicted
AMIN, Mohamed [photographer]. The Holy Mosque at Mecca. Saudi Arabia: Ministry of Finance and National Economy. 1980.
Oblong folio. Original green full morocco, ornamented and lettered in gilt, all edges gilt, housed in the original publisher's morocco-covered drop-back box; the latter with a few expert restorations; pp. 119, highly illustrated in colour; a well-preserved copy of this luxury book production with a only a very limited number of copies produced.
First and only edition. This splendid photobook with historical notes in Arabic and English celebrates the Holy Mosque and Kaaba in Mecca, and the architectural improvements of the surroundings carried out by the Ibn Saud dynasty in the 20th century.
Mohamed Amin (1943-1996), Kenya-born and of Punjabi descent, was the son of a poor railway worker. Fascinated by photography from a young age he founded the Camerapix company in 1963 in Dar es Salaam. During the 1970s he became a photojournalist sought-after for his work in Africa and the Middle East.
Both WorldCat and LibraryHub locate copies only at Oxford, in the Royal Institute of British Architects, in Abu Dhabi and the National Library of Australia.
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