It is a well-known fact that the Oriental Collections in Leiden University Library contain more than the Oriental manuscripts by which that institution has justly became famous. Its expensive collections of printed materials of all periods and regions, its audio-visual collections, and its vast collections of historical photographs are valuable resources in there own right. It is from the latter tha the present book was composed.

What is shown and described here is only a small part of the whole of West-Arabian images, a type of material that is particularly well represented in the Leiden collection. They entered, as part of the Snouck Hurgronje collections, the Library from 1936 onwards. These and other photographic collections in the Legatum Warnerianum, the Oriental collections of Leiden University Library are still largely undescribed.

In 1995 the Leiden Library devoted attention to its photographic collections by the publication of and exhibition catalogue on historical photographs from Iran. The subject of the present volume is Western Arabia, and more particularly Mecca and Jeddah.

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