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.
VIII.—Persian Súfíism; and Persian Shiahism in Its Relation to the Persian Passion-Drama.
Since the narrative which follows this introduction is written rather from the Persian and Shiah than from the Turkish and Sunni point of view, it is necessary for us to dwell briefly on two more important subjects in connection with Persian thought:—(a) on the love of metaphysical speculation which vindicates the claim of Aryan thought to be free, and which has given rise to the doctrines of Súfíism,—our immediate consideration; and (b) on the growth of Shiahism, the State religion, and more particularly in its relation to the Passion-Drama, which is the outcome of the Muharram celebrations in honour of Huseyn’s martyrdom.
(a) Persian Súfíism.
Now the Súfís, who are split up into numerous sects, with slightly varying doctrines, speak of themselves as travellers, for they regard life as a journey from their earthly abode to the spiritual world. The stages between them and their destination are reckoned as seven. Some call them seven regions, and others seven towns. Unless the traveller get rid of his animal passions and pass safely through these seven stages he cannot hope to lose himself in the ocean of Union, nor slake his thirst for immortality in the unexampled wine of Love. The first region before the traveller, the region of Aspiration, can only be traversed on the charger of Patience. Though a thousand temptations beset him on the road he must not lose heart, but must seek to cleanse his mind from all selfish desires. Other-worldliness should alone absorb his thoughts, and to that end the gates of friendship and of enmity should be closed against the people of the world. Only thus can he find his way into the heart of the realm, wherein every traveller is a lover in search of the True Beloved.