At the dawn of the twentieth century, the British Empire stood at the height of its power, governing vast territories across the globe, including many Muslim lands. For many Britons of that era, Muslims were subjects of conquest, peoples of distant colonies. To look down on them and their faith was, for many, instinctive. Yet a small number of men and women approached Islam with intellectual curiosity and humility. They studied Islam not to understand a subject people, but because they found in it a truth they could not easily dismiss. Among this minority whose story remains relatively little known was Lady Evelyn Zainab Murray.
Her Early Life
Born in 1867 into an aristocratic Scottish family, Lady Evelyn Murray enjoyed the privileges that accompanied wealth and status. Her family’s affluence enabled them to spend winters in Algiers, then under French colonial rule. There, amid the sights and sounds of North Africa, a young Evelyn encountered Islam for the first time.
She befriended local Algerian children, who introduced her to their mosques and religious life. The call to prayer must have left a deep impression on her. Commenting on the adhan, she wrote: “I wonder how anyone can listen to that unmoved.”
Although she did not formally embrace Islam during her youth, she later recalled that she had indeed been a Muslim “at heart” from an early age. A Muslim would see in this a reflection of the fitrah, the natural inclination towards faith.
A Belief Kept Quietly
The exact date of her conversion remains uncertain, and there is good reason to believe she held the faith privately for many years before making it known. According to her biographer, William Facey, a poem she wrote in Cairo in 1889 titled “The Essence of All” reveals a spiritual search for the One God. Facey also notes that letters written to her in 1914–1915 addressed her as “Our Sister in Islam, Lady Zainab,” indicating that she had already adopted a Muslim identity, even as she remained publicly unaffiliated.
Her attachment to Islam eventually contributed to tensions in her marriage, culminating in separation from her husband in 1922.
Lady Zainab later recounted her first acknowledgement of her faith, which occurred during an audience with the Pope, who asked whether she was Catholic (or Protestant). Without forethought, she replied that she was a Muslim. The spontaneous response proved a turning point for her: she resolved thereafter to learn the faith properly — and she did.
The Road to Makkah
In 1933, Lady Zainab decided to perform the Hajj. She wrote to the administration of the newly established Saudi state through its London embassy, navigating the formalities of a kingdom that was, at that time, cautious about permitting European Muslims entry for pilgrimage. She was granted passage with unusual swiftness, probably as a consequence of her noble background, which the young kingdom may have found diplomatically useful.
It was the era before commercial aviation had transformed pilgrimage; she crossed from Egypt to Jeddah by sea and continued overland by car. Among the locals she encountered, she was, in her own words, assumed to be Turkish. That a British Muslim woman had made the journey was, to most, unthinkable.
She must have been struck by the extraordinary diversity of the Muslim world, which she witnessed at Hajj. She encountered Chinese Muslims, admired the vibrancy of Javanese women’s dress, and met a Nigerian nobleman who had crossed the desert on foot with his family to reach the Holy Cities. Reflecting on what she observed, she wrote that Hajj was simultaneously “a League of Nations, an International Academy of Art and Science, and an International Chamber of Commerce, all in one.”
In her travel narrative, Pilgrimage to Mecca, she described the rites of Hajj in careful detail, guiding readers through each stage of the pilgrimage. She was aware, too, that she had become the first British-born Muslim woman to have completed the Hajj. Indeed, on the day she returned to the port, newspapers across the United Kingdom all carried the news.
Her Travelogue and Her Opinions
One of the fruits of her Hajj was Pilgrimage to Mecca, a travelogue that is both a personal account and a work of quiet polemic. Lady Zainab writes not as an outsider examining a foreign faith but as a believer describing her own.
According to William Facey, her travel writings never achieved the popularity enjoyed by some of her contemporaries. One reason may have been her willingness to portray Islam sympathetically at a time when many Western travel narratives depicted Muslim societies through a colonial lens.
Her scholarship is evident. She draws on the history of both Islam and Christianity with confidence, comparing scripture and challenging the selective criticisms that Western writers had levelled at Muslim civilisation. She exposed double standards, often pointing to episodes of brutality in Christian history that were ignored by critics of Islam. She criticised writers like Charles Doughty, author of Arabia Deserta, whom she found too anchored in his Christian prejudices to see clearly. She even drew on the Gospels in Islam’s defence, quoting Matthew 21:42 (the stone the builders rejected becoming the cornerstone), as a parable she found fitting for Islam’s place in world history.
She pointed to the fact that “Islam alone has preached tolerance as an essential part of her faith.” Nevertheless, she was not uncritical; she acknowledged the excesses of palace lives in Islamic history, but her overall judgment was firm. Islam, she argued, was “the most practical, most calculated to solve the world’s problems and bring humanity peace and happiness.” And she also notes, “To believe and not do good cannot be in Islam.”
The Guardian, which was then the Manchester Guardian, reviewing her book in July 1934, acknowledged that she might be “a little prejudiced in favour of her Islam” but conceded the fact that readers had grown accustomed to hearing ill of the faith, most of it born of ignorance.
A Turbulent Ummah
Lady Zainab’s Hajj took place during a turbulent period in the Muslim world. The Ottoman Caliphate had fallen barely a decade before. The Sharif of Mecca, Hussein bin Ali, whose revolt had been supported by Lady Zainab’s own nation, had lost his kingdom to Ibn Saud. One of the political consequences she observed directly was the railway. She noted that its absence, due to sabotage by revolters, made the journey harder for thousands.
The Hijaz was now under Saudi rule, administered according to principles she associated with the Ikhwah (the vanguard of Ibn Abdulhwahab’s movement). She noted the differences in religious culture between other arabs and those shaped by the new order. While she admired aspects of the government’s commitment to Islamic principles, she also believed that respect for legitimate differences of opinion was essential for maintaining harmony within the Muslim community.
Back Home
When Lady Zainab returned to England, her news had been covered. In November 1933, she delivered a lantern lecture in London, speaking about the beauty of the sacred sites and the meaning of the pilgrimage.
Lady Zainab Evelyn passed away in 1963. There was no Muslim in Scotland available to perform her janazah. The Shah Jahan Mosque in Woking, the oldest purpose-built mosque in Britain, was then contacted. In response, the Imam travelled to carry out her funeral rites. In accordance with her wishes, she was buried on her estate in the Scottish Highlands. She also willed that her grave bear the Qur’anic verse: “Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth.”
May Allah have mercy on her!
*The views expressed in this content are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of İdrakpost.
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