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1896 Muhammad Sadiq Bey ( photographer )

photographer Muhammad Sadiq Bey (1832 1902) 1896

The most common name for the first person to photograph Saudi Arabia is Muhammad Sadiq Bey, who died in 1902 at the age of 70. He was an Egyptian military officer with a rank equivalent to a modern-day brigadier general. He used a camera, the likes of which are now only seen in specialized museums, with which Brigadier General Muhammad Sadiq Bey took the oldest known photographs of Mecca and Medina.

He studied military engineering and photography in Paris, obtaining a diploma from one of its colleges. He then joined the Egyptian army. Afterward, he visited the Kingdom three times between 1860 and 1880, taking various photographs and creating maps and writings to facilitate the Hajj pilgrimage.

Muhammad Sadiq Bey authored four books about his travels, the most important of which is "Mash'al al-Mahmal" (The Torch of the Mahmal), a 60-page work printed in 1867 and again in 1881 by the Wadi al-Nil Press in Cairo. In it, he recorded the events of each day according to both the Hijri and Gregorian calendars. He also published a map he drew of the route from Cairo to Mecca and Medina and back, and listed the names of famous stations, towns, and villages along the way.

The first photographs taken by Muhammad Sadiq Bey were of the Prophet's Mosque and the Kaaba in 1880, during his journey that began "from Muhammad Ali Square at three o'clock, in the presence of Khedive Muhammad Pasha Tawfiq. His Excellency the Emir of the Hajj, Major General Akif Pasha, received the reins of the camel carrying the Mahmal, as was customary, from the Khedive's noble hand, in the presence of the Grand Viziers, the Chief Justice, the Sheikh al-Islam, and all the dignitaries and princes. The procession proceeded in a grand manner..." according to his account in the book.