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Pilgrims Going to Mecca
This painting by Leon Belly is another excellent example of nineteenth-century Orientalist art. It captures several common and recurring stereotypes of the Middle East including: 1) the centrality of religious life (Muslims performing pilgrimage to Mecca); 2) a desert landscape foregrounded by a camel caravan; and 3) bearded, robed, and turbaned men with no detectable trace of women. While it is possible to acknowledge the aesthetic qualities of this painting and presume there was no nefarious intent on the part of the artist to demean or degrade Middle Eastern people, it is also important to be aware of how an image like this conditions an outsider’s (in particular, a European’s) imagining of the Middle East and thereby sustains reductive stereotypes of a foreign place and culture.
Name: Pilgrims Going to Mecca
Material: Paint on canvas
Size:
Height: 161 cm (5 ft 3.3 in)
Width: 242 cm (7 ft 11 in)
Place of Origin: Unknown
Date: 1861
Location: Musée d'Orsay, Paris, France
Source and Registration#: Wikimedia Commons. Link to resource
(accessed August 10, 2010).
John Woods
Professor of Iranian and Central Asian History and of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, The University of Chicago
Alexander Barna
Outreach Coordinator, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, University of Chicago
