Seventeen miles beyond El Suwayrkiyah is the small village of Sufayuah, beyond which the country becomes again very wild and barren. Burton thus describes the scenery the day after leaving Sufayuah: “This day’s march was peculiarly Arabia. It was a desert peopled only with echoes—a place of death for what little there is to die in it—a wilderness where, to use my companion’s phrase, there is nothing but He (Allah). Nature, scalped, flayed, discovered her anatomy to the gazer’s eye. The horizon was a sea of mirage; gigantic sand-columns whirled over the plain; and on both sides of our road were huge piles of bare rock standing detached upon the surface of sand and clay. Here they appeared in oval lumps, heaped up with a semblance of symmetry; there a single bowlder stood, with its narrow foundation based upon a pedestal of low, dome-shaped rock. All are of a pink coarse-grained granite, which flakes off in large crusts under the influence of the atmosphere.”
After four more long marches the caravan reached a station called El Zaribah, where the pilgrims halted a day to assume the ihram, or costume which they wear on approaching Mecca. They were now in the country of the Utaybah Bedouins, the most fierce and hostile of all the tribes on the road. Although only two marches, or fifty miles, from Mecca, the pilgrims were by no means safe, as the night after they left Zaribah testified. While threading a narrow pass between high rocks, in the twilight, there was a sudden discharge of musketry and some camels dropped dead. The Utaybah, hidden behind the rocks crowning the pass, poured down an irregular fire upon the pilgrims, who were panic-stricken and fell into great disorder. The Wahabees, however, commenced scaling the rocks, and very soon drove the robbers from their ambush. The caravan then hurried forward in great disorder, leaving the dead and severely wounded lying on the ground.
“At the beginning of the skirmish,” says Burton, “I had primed my pistols, and sat with them ready for use. But soon seeing that there was nothing to be done, and, wishing to make an impression—nowhere does Bobadil now ‘go down’ but in the East—I called aloud for my supper. Shekh Nur, exanimate with fear, could not move. The boy Mohammed ejaculated only an ‘Oh, sir!’ and the people around exclaimed in disgust, ‘By Allah! he eats!’ Shekh Abdullah, the Meccan, being a man of spirit, was amused by the spectacle. ‘Are these Afghan manners, Effendim?’ he inquired from the shugduf behind me. ‘Yes,’ I replied aloud, ‘in my country we always dine before an attack of robbers, because that gentry is in the habit of sending men to bed supperless.’ The Shekh laughed aloud, but those around him looked offended.”
The morning after this adventure the pilgrims reached the Wady Laymun, or Valley of Limes, a beautiful region of gardens and orchards, only twenty-four miles from Mecca. Here they halted four hours to rest and enjoy the fruits and fresh water; then the line of march was resumed toward the Holy City. In the afternoon the range of Jebel Kora, in the southeast, became visible, and as evening approached all eyes were strained, but in vain, for a sight of Mecca. Night came down, and the pilgrims moved slowly onward in the darkness. An hour after midnight Burton was roused by a general excitement in the caravan. “Mecca! Mecca!” cried some voices; “The Sanctuary, O the Sanctuary!” exclaimed others, and all burst into loud cries of “Labeyk!” not unfrequently broken by sobs. Looking out from his litter the traveller saw by the light of the southern stars the dim outlines of a large city. They were passing over the last rocky ridge by an artificial cut. The winding path was flanked on both sides by high watch-towers; a short distance farther they entered the northern suburb.
The Meccan boy Mohammed, who had been Burton’s companion during the pilgrimage, conducted the latter to his mother’s house, where he remained during his stay. A meal of vermicelli and sugar was prepared on their arrival in the night, and after an hour or two of sleep they rose at dawn, in order to perform the ceremonies of arrival. After having bathed, they walked in their pilgrim garb to the Beit Allah, or “House of God.”
“There,” says Burton, “there at last it lay, the bourne of my long and weary pilgrimage, realizing the plans and hopes of many and many a year. The mirage medium of fancy invested the huge catafalque and its gloomy pall with peculiar charms. There were no giant fragments of hoar antiquity as in Egypt, no remains of graceful and harmonious beauty as in Greece and Italy, no barbaric gorgeousness as in the buildings of India; yet the view was strange, unique, and how few have looked upon the celebrated shrine! I may truly say, that, of all the worshippers who clung weeping to the curtain, or who pressed their beating hearts to the stone, none felt for the moment a deeper emotion than did the Hadji from the far north. It was as if the poetical legends of the Arab spoke truth, and that the waving wings of angels, not the sweet breezes of morning, were agitating and swelling the black covering of the shrine. But, to confess humbling truth, theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, mine was the ecstasy of gratified pride.”
Burton’s description of the Beit Allah and the Kaaba is more minute and careful than that of Burckhardt, but does not differ from it in any important particular. Neither is it necessary to quote his account of the ceremonies to be performed by each individual pilgrim, with all their mechanical prostrations and repetitions. His account of the visit to the famous Black Stone, however, is both curious and amusing: “For a long time I stood looking in despair at the swarming crowd of Bedouin and other pilgrims that besieged it. But the boy Mohammed was equal to the occasion. During our circuit he had displayed a fiery zeal against heresy and schism by foully abusing every Persian in his path, and the inopportune introduction of hard words into his prayers made the latter a strange patchwork. He might, for instance, be repeating ‘and I take refuge with thee from ignominy in this world,’ when, ‘O thou rejected one, son of the rejected!’ would be the interpolation addressed to some long-bearded Khorassani, ‘and in that to come—O hog and brother of a hoggess!’ And so he continued till I wondered that no one dared to turn and rend him. After vainly addressing the pilgrims, of whom nothing could be seen but a mosaic of occiputs and shoulder-blades, the boy Mohammed collected about half a dozen stalwart Meccans, with whose assistance, by sheer strength, we wedged our way into the thin and light-legged crowd. The Bedouins turned round upon us like wildcats, but they had no daggers. The season being autumn, they had not swelled themselves with milk for six months; and they had become such living mummies that I could have managed single-handed half a dozen of them. After thus reaching the stone, despite popular indignation, testified by impatient shouts, we monopolized the use of it for at least ten minutes. Whilst kissing it and rubbing hands and forehead upon it I narrowly observed it, and came away persuaded that it is a big aërolite.”
On September 12th the pilgrims set out for Mount Arafat. Three miles from Mecca there is a large village called Muna, noted for three standing miracles—the pebbles, there thrown at the Devil, return by angelic agency to whence they came; during the three days of drying meat rapacious birds and beasts cannot prey there, and flies do not settle upon the articles of food exposed in the bazaars. Beyond the place there is a mosque called El Khayf, where, according to some traditions, Adam is buried, his head being at one end of the long wall and his feet at the other, while the dome is built over his navel.
“Arafat,” says Burton, “is about a six hours’ march, or twelve miles, on the Taif road, due east of Mecca. We arrived there in a shorter time, but our weary camels, during the last third of the way, frequently threw themselves upon the ground. Human beings suffered more. Between Muna and Arafat I saw no less than five men fall down and die upon the highway; exhausted and moribund, they had dragged themselves out to give up the ghost where it departs to instant beatitude. The spectacle showed how easy it is to die in these latitudes; each man suddenly staggered, fell as if shot, and, after a brief convulsion, lay still as marble. The corpses were carefully taken up, and carelessly buried that same evening, in a vacant space amongst the crowds encamped upon the Arafat plain.