VII.—Story of the Muslim Moons.
The twelve Muhammadan months are lunar, and number twenty-nine and thirty days alternately. Thus the whole year contains only three hundred and fifty-four days; but eleven times in the course of thirty years an intercalary day is added. Accordingly, thirty-two of our years are, roughly speaking, equal to thirty-three Muhammadan years. The Muhammadan Era dates from the morning after the Hegira, or the flight of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina, that is, on the 16th of July, A.D. 622. Every year begins earlier than the preceding one, so that a month beginning in summer in the present year will, sixteen years hence, fall in winter. The following are the names of the months, which do not correspond in any way with ours: 1, Muharram; 2, Safar; 3, Rabíu-’l-avval; 4, Rabíu-’s-sání or Rabíu-’l-ákhir; 5, Jumádáu-’l-úlá; 6, Jumádáu-’s-sání or Jumádáu-’l-ákhir; 7, Rajab; 8, Sha’bán; 9, Ramazán; 10, Shavvál; 11, Zú-’l-ka’dah, or Zí-ka’d; 12, Zú-’l-hijjah, or Zí-hajj. Many stories of these months were told to me by the priests and the pilgrims whom I met at Mecca, and it is therefore my intention to tell over again the stories of the most cherished months of the Muslim year. These are Rajab, Sha’bán, Ramazán, Shavvál, Zú-’l-ka’dah, Zú-’l-hijjah, and Muharram.
On the Day of Judgment, the Holy Muezzin, sitting on the Throne, will cry out, ere he pass judgment on the Faithful, saying: “O moons of Rajab, Sha’bán, and Ramazán, how stands it with the deeds of this humble slave of ours?” The three moons will then prostrate themselves before the Throne, and answer: “O Lord, we bear witness to the good deeds of this humble slave. When he was with us he kept on loading his caravans with provisions for the next world, beseeching Thee to grant him Thy divine favour, and expressing his perfect contentment with the fate that Thou hadst sent unto him.” After them their guardian-angels, meekly kneeling on their knees, will raise their voices in praise of the pious Muslim, crying: “O Lord God Almighty, we also bear witness to the good deeds of this humble slave of Thine. On earth his eyes, his ears, his nose, his mouth, and his stomach were all obedient both to whatsoever Thou hast forbidden and also to whatsoever Thou hast made lawful. The days he passed in fasting, and the nights in sleepless supplication. Verily he is a good doer!” Then Allah will command his slave to be borne into Paradise on a steed of light, accompanied by angels, and by all the rewards of his piety on camels of light, and there he will be conducted to a palace whose foundation is laid in everlasting felicity, and whose inmates never grow old. The moon of Rajab is the month of Allah. It is said that there is a stream of that name in Paradise, whose water is white, and more wholesome than milk and sweeter than honey. The first to welcome the new arrival will be this stream, which will straightway wend its course round his palace. To Salim, one of his disciples, Muhammad is reported to have said: “If you keep fast for one day during the month of Rajab you will be free from the terror of death, and the agony of death, from the percussion of the grave, and the loneliness thereof. If you keep fast for two days the eight doors of Paradise will be opened unto you.”
The authoritative tradition goes that a crier will make himself heard from between the earth and the sky, summoning the pious who observed the prayers and the privations of the moon of Rajab: “Oh, ye Rajabians, come forth and present yourselves before your Creator.” Then the Rajabians, whose heads will be crowned with pearls and rubies, and whose faces will be bathed in the universal light, will arise and stand before the Throne. And each one among them will have a thousand angels on his right hand and a thousand on his left, and they will shout with one accord, saying: “O, ye Rajabians, may ye be deserving of all the holy favours ye are about to receive!” And last of all, Allah, in his mercy, will say to them: “O my male and female slaves, I swear by my own magnanimity, that I will give you lodgings in the most delightful nooks of my Paradise, namely, in the palaces around which flow the most refreshing streams of purest water.”
A baby is to the Muslim a symbol of purity: and so a man who worships God in the month of Rajab will become like unto a new-born child, always provided that he repent of the sins which he has committed, and follow the law of the Prophet. Not until then will the pious Rajabian be in a fit state, in his character of new-born babe, to start life afresh. The Muhammadans, in so far as duty and obedience are concerned, put on pretty much the same footing the relation of the slave to his master, of the wife to her husband, of the child to its parent, and of the guest to his host. The parallel between the last-mentioned and the preceding is complete because the guest must acquiesce in his host’s will, which is supreme. In the matter of repentance, that of Nessouh is exemplary among the Muhammadans.
Now, this man Nessouh was in his face and his voice so like a woman that his wicked nature persuaded him to wear skirts that he might add to his experience of the opposite sex by mixing freely among its members. Soon, his curiosity growing in ratio with his acquired knowledge, we hear of him as an attendant in the hammam of the royal seraglio, where he might have pursued his studies in peace and in rapture had not one of the Royal Princesses, who had lost a ring, cast suspicion on every servant in turn. The seed of Nessouh’s repentance was sown when the decree went out that all the attendants of the baths were to be searched. The fear lest his sex should be discovered yielded so swiftly to repentance for having veiled it, that Almighty Allah despatched an angel from Paradise to discover the missing treasure before the decree took effect; and thenceforward Nessouh, out of the gratitude of his heart, renounced his studies of human nature in petticoats, and vied with the most rigid disciplinarians in prayer and in fasting. His virtues grew so conspicuous in male attire that his repentance has come to be accepted as worthy of imitation by every true Believer.
According to tradition it was on the first day of God’s moon that Noah, having taken his seat in the Ark, commanded all the men and jinns and beasts that were with him to keep fast from sunrise to sunset. On the evening of the same day, when the sun was going down, the Ark, riding over the flood, would have heeled over had not Allah sent seventy thousand of his angels to the rescue. It is interesting to note that the number of all the traditional rewards of virtue, as well as that of such of the heavenly hosts as lend their assistance in cases of distress, is always a multiple of seven. A Meccan priest added the following to my collection of “rewards”: God will build seventy thousand cities in Paradise, each city containing seventy thousand mansions, each mansion seventy thousand houris, each houri surrounded by seventy thousand beautiful serving women, for the pilgrim—mark this—who shall say his prayers with the best accent on the Hájj Day. The Mullá in question was himself a perfect Arabic scholar; his enunciation in reciting the forthcoming bliss was faultlessly correct; each syllable seemed to pay his lips the tribute of a kiss for the pleasure it had derived from listening to the mellifluous sound of its predecessors. This learned priest will be in his element on all scores should the Paradise of his invention be materialised.
As Rajab belongs to Allah so Sha’bán is held sacred to the Prophet. For we read in the history of Islám that Muhammad, who entered Medina on the first day of the gracious moon, commanded the muezzins to make it known to his people that the good actions which they might perform during the month would help both himself and them to gain salvation; whereas their evil actions would be committed against his apostleship, and would on that account be the more severely punished hereafter.
Once a year, on the approach of Ramazán, the precincts of Paradise, and all its gardens and palaces, are illuminated, festooned, and decorated, and a most tuneful wind, known in Arabic by the name of Meshireh, makes music in the trees. Now, no sooner do the houris hear this sound than they rush out from their seclusion, and cry aloud: “Is there any one to marry us through the desire to perform a good deed towards the creatures of God?” Then, turning to Rezvan, the guardian of Paradise, “What night is this?” they ask; and Rezvan answers, “O ye fair-faced houris, this is the eve of the holy moon of Ramazán. The gates of Paradise have I ordered to be opened unto the fast-keepers of the Faith of the Faithful.” Then Allah, addressing the angel who has the charge of Hell, says to him: “O Málik, I bid thee to close thy gates against the fast-keepers of the faith of my Apostle.” And next, summoning the Archangel of Revelations, He gives command, saying: “O Gabriel, go forth in the earth and put Satan in chains, and all his followers, that the path of my chosen people may be safe.” So, on the first day of Ramazán, Gabriel swoops down on the earth accompanied by hosts of angels. He has six hundred wings, and opens all of them except two. In his hands he bears four green banners, emblems of the Muslim creed. These he plants on the summit of Mount Sinai, and on the Prophet’s tomb at Medina, and in the Harem of Mecca. His army of angels bivouacs on the plains round about the Holy City and on the surrounding mountains. On the eve of the day of reward, which is called Ghadre, the angels are ordered to disperse throughout the Muslim world, and every true Believer seen praying during that night is embraced by one of them, and his prayer meets with an angelic Amen. At the dawn of Ghadre day a heavenly bugle recalls the angels to Mecca. When Gabriel returns to Heaven it is to say to Allah, “My Lord, all the true Believers have I forgiven in Thy name save those who have been constant wine-bibbers, or incurred the displeasure of their parents, or indulged in abusing their fellow Muslims.”
The various sects of the Muhammadans disagree a good deal as to the date of Ghadre day. Some say it is on the 19th, some on the 21st, and others on the 23rd of the Muslim Lent; but all agree in believing it to be the day on which the books of deeds, good and evil, are balanced, and on which the angels make known to Muhammad the predestination of his followers for whom he intercedes. All Shi’ahs who would win a reputation for piety must keep Ahia, that is, pass the three nights above-mentioned in fasting and holy devotions—a penance of untold severity in that every day of the month must be similarly spent from sunrise to sundown. Through most ardent prayers on the 21st of Ramazán the devout Mussulman may win the privilege of becoming a Hájí in the following year. The 7th is the anniversary of Muhammad’s victory over the Kuraish in the battle of Badre, and is a great day with all Islamites. For the rest, the Arabs follow the example of their Prophet in breaking their fast on dates and water; special angels are appointed to plant heavenly trees, and to build divine palaces in readiness for such of the Muslims as should neither neglect their religious purifications nor forget to behave themselves as “Allah’s guests.” Many Muslims, unquestionably, adhere strictly to all the rites and observances of the occasion; not a few, on the other hand, though they may fast during the day, devote the night to feasting. Indeed, in every capital of Islám, in Teheran, in Constantinople, and in Cairo, the darkling hours are given up by certain people to amusements and sometimes to vicious pursuits.
The heavenly hosts under the Archangel Gabriel, with his five hundred and ninety-eight wings wide open, and his green banner flying over the gate of the Ka’bah,—the heavenly hosts, I say, dispersing through the Muslim world on the eve of Ghadre will prevail on the ghosts of the one hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets to kiss the Muslims that are piously engaged at night, delivering them from the danger of drowning, of being buried under ruins, of choking at meal times, and of being killed by wild beasts. For them the grave will have no terror, and on leaving it a substantial cheque on the keeper of Paradise, crossed and made payable to bearer, will be placed in the hands of each one of them.
On the first day of the moon of Shavvál, the fast of Ramazán being over, all true Muslims are supposed to give away in charity a measure of wheat, barley, dates, raisins, or other provisions in common use. The guests who stay over the preceding night are entitled to receive a portion of the alms distributed by the master of the house next morning; and hence only the poor and needy are invited to accept hospitality on the occasion of the Zikat-é-Fetre—that is, the festival of alms-giving. The fulfilment of the law is believed not only to produce an increase of wealth in the forthcoming year, but also to cleanse the body of all impurities. So much for the rewards as a stimulus to honesty. Now for the penalty as a deterrent from greed. In the third Súra of the Kurán it is written: “But let not those who are covetous of what God of His bounty hath granted them imagine that their avarice is better for them; nay, rather it is worse for them. For that which they have covetously reserved shall be bound as a collar about their necks on the day of the resurrection: and God is well acquainted with what ye do.” Shiahs are reluctant to get married in the interval between the first of Shavvál and the tenth of Zú-’l-hijjah, because the Prophet is said to have married Aishah, the enemy of ’Alí, about that time. On the other hand the Sunnis, who reverence that brilliant woman, commemorate her wedding day by solemnising their own during this season, unless they are performing the pilgrimage of Mecca.
The most sacred day of the following month—the moon of Zú-’l-ka’dah—is the twenty-fifth. On that day Adam was created; Abraham, Ishmael, and Jesus were born, and the Shiah Messiah, the concealed Imám, will come again to judge the world. A Muslim, if he keep fast on the twenty-fifth of Zú-’l-ka’dah, will earn the rewards of a man to whom Allah in his mercy should grant the privilege and the power of praying for nine hundred years. On the first of Zú-’l-hijjah, which is the month of pilgrimage, Abraham received from God the title of Al-Khalíl, or the Friend of Allah. It is accounted a good deed to fast from the first to the tenth day of this the last journeying month; it is also wise to do so, for it is not every month in the year that the Mussulman can win, by nine days of fasting, the fruits of a whole lifetime of self-denial. Another tradition deserving of mention in connection with this month is that Jesus, in the company of Gabriel, was sent to earth by God with five prayers, which he was commanded to repeat on the first five days of the pilgrims’ moon; but the two holiest days of the moon of Zú-’l-hijjah are the ninth and the tenth. On the ninth, after morning prayer, the pilgrims, in olden times, departed from the Valley of Mina, whither they had come on the previous day, and rushed in a headlong manner to Mount Arafat, where a sermon is preached, and where they performed the devotions entitling them to be called Hájís. But nowadays they pass through Mina to Mount Arafat without stopping on the outward journey; and at sunset, after the sermon is over, they betake themselves to Muzdalifah, an oratory between Arafat and Mina, and there the hours of the night are spent in prayer and in reading the Kurán.
On the tenth, by daybreak, the holy monument, or al Masher al harám, is visited, after which the pilgrims hasten back, on the rising of the sun, to the Valley of Mina, where, on the 10th and the two following days, the stoning of the Devil takes place, every pilgrim casting a certain number of stones at three pillars. This rite is as old as Abraham, who, being interrupted by Satan when he was about to sacrifice his son Ishmael, was commanded by God to put the tempter to flight by throwing stones at him. Next, still on the same day, the tenth of Zú-’l-hijjah, and in the same place, the Valley of Mina, the pilgrims slay their victims, and when the sacrifice is over they shave their heads and trim their nails, and then return to Mecca in order to take their leave of the Ka’bah. All these ceremonies will be described in detail in the forthcoming narrative. Meanwhile, by way of further introduction, a few words must be said as to the animals sacrificed. The victims should be camels, kine, sheep, or goats. The camels and kine should be females and the sheep and goats males. In age the camels should be five years and not less; the cows and goats in their second year; and the sheep not younger than six months. All should be without blemish, neither blind nor lame: their ears should not have been cut, nor their horns have been broken. The males should be complete, and all be well fed. They were woefully lean, however, in the year 1319 of the Flight. The camels are sacrificed while standing, the fore and hind legs being tied together. A single blow is delivered where the head joins the neck, the name of God being uttered the while. The victim must face the Kiblah, and the butcher or the pilgrim, as the case may be, stands on the right of the animal he is going to slay. If the pilgrim be too tender-hearted to deal the blow, he should catch hold of the butcher’s wrist, so as to take part in the act of sacrifice. All the other victims—namely, the kine, the sheep, and the goats—are made to lie on their sides facing Mecca, all four legs being securely fastened, then their throats are cut with a sharp knife, without, however, severing the head from the body.
The custom of sacrificing a camel on the tenth day of Zú-’l-hijjah prevails among the Shiahs in most of the towns of Persia and of Central Asia. The ceremony varies with the locality; but the one we witnessed was so picturesque that we cannot refrain from describing it. For the first nine days the camel, richly caparisoned, is led through the streets of the city; half a dozen Dervishes, intoning passages of the Kurán, swing along at the head of the procession; at every house the camel is made to halt, and subscriptions are raised towards its purchase-money and its maintenance. The victim, goaded on from street to street and from square to square, ends at last by collecting alms for its tormentors. On the eve of the Day of Sacrifice the camel is stripped of its gaudy trappings, and its body is, as it were, mapped out into portions with red ink, one portion being allotted to every quarter of the city. The place of sacrifice is usually outside the city walls, and early in the morning each district arms its strongest men to go and claim its share of the carcase. Each group may contain as many as twenty men, bristling from head to foot with uncouth weapons, and a band of drummers adds to the barbaric display the sounds of discordant music. One man in each group rides on horseback and wears a cashmere shawl; it is he who receives into his hands the sacrificial share of the parish he represents. Prayers are said, and then, at a given signal, the butcher prepares his knife, and the cutters appointed by the respective quarters make ready to hack the victim in pieces. The camel, bare of covering, and marked all over with the red lines, turns its supercilious eyes on the eager cutters, and they, in their turn, watch the butcher. The wretched victim may or may not be conscious of its fate. I believe it to be conscious; but, whether it is or not, there is no sign of terror in its eyes, only the customary look of sly disdain. No sooner does the butcher plunge the knife into the camel’s windpipe than the cutters vie with one another as to who shall be the first to finish carving the still animate body, each allotted part of which is handed warm and well-nigh throbbing with life, to the horseman of the quarter to which it belongs. He takes it in procession to the house of the magistrate, who distributes it among the poor.
The prayer most acceptable to God is that of Nodbeh, which must be said by the pilgrims on Mount Arafat, with tears pouring from their eyes. The Prophet rose to a noble conception of the next life. He not only believed that the pure-hearted will see God, he also proclaimed that blessing to be the height of heavenly bliss. The Muslim Paradise, therefore, in its material aspect unalloyed, is the invention of the tradition-mongers. According to the orthodox among them, it is situated above the seven heavens, immediately under the Throne of God. Some say that the soil of it consists of the finest wheat flour, others will have it to be of the purest musk, and others again of saffron. Its palaces have walls of solid gold, its stones are pearls and jacinths, and of its trees, all of which have golden trunks, the most remarkable is the Tree of Happiness, Túba, as they call it. This tree, which stands in the Palace of Muhammad, is laden with fruits of every kind, with grapes and pomegranates, with oranges and dates, and peaches and nectarines, which are of a growth and a flavour unknown to mortals. In response to the desire of the blessed, it will yield, in addition to the luscious fruit, not only birds ready dressed for the table, but also flowing garments of silk and of velvet, and gaily caparisoned steeds to ride on, all of which will burst out from its leaves. There will be no need to reach out the hand to the branches, for the branches will bend down of their own accord to the hand of the person who would gather of their products. So large is the Túba tree that a man “mounted on the fleetest horse would not be able to gallop from one end of its shade to the other in a hundred years.” All the rivers of Paradise take their rise from the root of the Tree of Happiness; some of them flow with water, some with milk, some with wine, and others with honey. Their beds are of musk, their sides of saffron, their earth of camphire, and their pebbles are rubies and emeralds. The most noteworthy among them, after the River of Life, is Al-Káwthar. This word, Al-Káwthar, which signifies abundance, has come to mean the gift of prophecy, and the water of the river of that name is derived into Muhammad’s pond. According to a tradition of the Prophet, this river, wherein his Lord promised him abundance of wisdom, is whiter than milk, cooler than snow, sweeter than honey, and smoother than cream; and those who drink of it shall never be thirsty.
The blessed, having quenched their thirst in Muhammad’s pond, are admitted into Paradise, and there they are entertained to dinner by the Supreme Host. For meat they will have the ox Balám and the fish Nún, and for bread—mark this—God will turn the whole earth into one huge loaf, and hand it to His guests, “holding it like a cake.” When the repast is over they will be conducted to the palaces prepared for them, where they will dwell with the houris they have won by their good deeds on earth. They will fare sumptuously through all eternity, and without loss of appetite, eat as much as they will: for all superfluities will be discharged by sweat as fragrant as musk, so that the last morsel of food will be as comforting as the first.
The imagination of the tradition-mongers is not less extravagant when it busies itself with the holy festivals of the faith. The A’yáde-Shadir, perhaps the most important of these feast-days, falls on the eighteenth of Zú-’l-hijjah. Books might be written—nay, tomes innumerable have been filled—to do honour to the attributes of that day. In fact, Oriental exaggeration in general, and the Shiah superstition in particular, reach the climax of fancy in the description of the events that are supposed by the devout Shiah to have happened on the A’yád of Ghadir. For was it not on the eighteenth of Zú-’l-hijjah that Muhammad mounted a camel, and, raising ’Alí in his arms, appointed this chivalrous cousin and son-in-law of his to be his lawful successor? This righteous act on the part of the Prophet is the corner-stone of the Shiah faith, and so it is not unnatural, perhaps, that it should have been made the source of unnumbered traditions. We read, among other inventions, that it was on that day that God chose to humiliate Satan by ordering an angel to rub his nose in the dirt; that the Archangel Gabriel, along with a host of angels, came down from heaven in the evening, bearing a throne of light, which he placed opposite to the Ka’bah, and from which he preached to his companions a stirring sermon in praise of Islám and its Prophet; that Moses had made his will in favour of Aaron and that Jesus had selected Simon Peter to go and preach to the Jews on the same day in their own lives.
The waters that acknowledged ’Alí to be the Prophet’s successor became “sweet” or fresh on the eighteenth of Zú-’l-hijjah. The rest either remained salt or turned brackish. The birds that accepted ’Alí as Muhammad’s heir were taught to sing like a nightingale or to talk like a parrot. Those that denied him were stricken deaf and dumb. For the angels who delighted to honour him a sumptuous palace was built with slabs of gold and silver in alternate order. Two hundred thousand domes crowned this edifice, and half of them were made of red rubies, and half of green emeralds. Through the courtyard flowed four rivers: one with water, one with milk, another with honey, and a fourth with wine. Trees of gold, bearing fruits of turquoise, grew along the banks, and on the branches were perched the most marvellous birds. Their bodies were made of pearls, their right wings of rubies, and their left wings of turquoises. All the hosts of heaven gathered together, praising God. The birds dived, singing, into the streams. The angels clapped their hands and shouted. The houris joined in the chorus. Then, with one accord, they all raised their voices in homage of ’Alí and his wife, the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. Lovers should remember to strengthen the bond of affection by exchanging rings. The men should kiss each other frequently whenever and wherever they meet. The servants should kiss their master’s hands, and the children those of their parents. If a Muslim smile on his brother-Muslim on this holy a’yád, God will smile on him on the day of the resurrection. If he die, he will receive the rewards of a martyr of the faith. If he call on a true believer, he will be visited in the grave when he draws his last breath by seventy thousand angels. If he neglect neither the ordained prayer nor the prescribed purification, he will be entitled to rank with the man to whom God has granted the rewards of one hundred thousand pilgrimages to Mecca. And a week later, on the 25th of Zú-’l-hijjah, the angel of revelations brought down from heaven to the Prophet the chapter of the Kurán, entitled Man, and told Muhammad that God congratulated him on the virtues of his family.