That night I stayed in the Harim till two A.M., wishing to see if it would be empty. But the morrow was to witness the egress to Arafat; many, therefore, passed the hours of darkness in the Harim. Numerous parties of pilgrims sat upon their rugs, with lanterns in front of them, conversing, praying, and contemplating the Kaabah. The cloisters were full of merchants, who resorted there to talk shop, and to vend such holy goods as combs, tooth-sticks, and rosaries. Before ten P.M. I found no opportunity of praying the usual two prostrations over the grave of Ishmael. After waiting long and patiently, at last I was stepping into the vacant place, when another pilgrim rushed forward; the boy Mohammed, assisted by me, instantly seized him, and, despite his cries and struggles, taught him to wait. Till midnight we sat chatting with the different ciceroni who came up to offer their services. I could not help remarking their shabby and dirty clothes, and was informed that during pilgrimage, when splendour is liable to be spoiled, they wear out old dresses; and appear endimanches for the Muharram fete, when most travellers have left the city. Presently my two companions, exhausted with fatigue, fell asleep; I went up to the Kaabah, with the intention of annexing a bit of the torn old Kiswat or curtain, but too many eyes were looking on. At this season of the year the Kiswat is much tattered at the base, partly by pilgrims fingers, and partly by the strain of the cord which confines it when the wind is blowing. It is considered a mere peccadillo to purloin a bit of the venerable stuff; but as the officers of the temple make money by selling it, they certainly would visit detection with an [p.177] unmerciful application of the quarterstaff. The piece in my possession was given to me by the boy Mohammed before I left Meccah. Waistcoats cut out of the Kiswah still make the combatants invulnerable in battle, and are considered presents fit for princes. The Moslems generally try to secure a strip of this cloth as a mark for the Koran, or for some such purpose. The opportunity, however, was favourable for a survey, and with a piece of tape, and the simple processes of stepping and spanning, I managed to measure all the objects concerning which I was curious.
At last sleep began to weigh heavily upon my eyelids. I awoke my companions, and in the dizziness of slumber they walked with me through the tall narrow street from the Bab al-Ziyadah to our home in the Shamiyah. The brilliant moonshine prevented our complaining, as other travellers have had reason to do, of the darkness and the difficulty of Meccahs streets. The town, too, appeared safe; there were no watchmen, and yet people slept everywhere upon cots placed opposite their open doors. Arrived at the house, we made some brief preparations for snatching a few hours sleep upon the Mastabah, a place so stifling, that nothing but utter exhaustion could induce lethargy there.
[FN#1] The Egyptian word is generally pronounced Zaghrutah, the plural is Zagharit, corrupted to Ziraleet. The classical Arabic term is Tahlil; the Persians call the cry Kil. It is peculiar to women, and is formed by raising the voice to its highest pitch, vibrating it at the same time by rolling the tongue, whose modulations express now joy, now grief. To my ear it always resembled the brain-piercing notes of a fife. Dr. Buchanan likens it to a serpent uttering human sounds. The unsavoury comparison, however, may owe its origin to the circumstance that Dr. Buchanan heard it at the orgies of Jagannath. [FN#2] As an Indian is called Miyan, sir, an elderly Indian becomes bara Miyan, great or ancient sir. I shall have occasion to speak at a future period of these Indians at Meccah. [FN#3] Sitt al-Kabirah, or simply Al-Kabirah, the Great Lady, is the title given to the mistress of. the house. [FN#4] This hill bounds Meccah on the East. According to many Moslems, Adam, with his wife and his son Seth, lie buried in a cave here. Others place his tomb at Muna; the Majority at Najaf. The early Christians had a tradition that our first parents were interred under Mount Calvary; the Jews place their grave near Hebron. Habil (Abel), it is well known, is supposed to be entombed at Damascus; and Kabil (Cain) rests at last under Jabal Shamsan, the highest wall of the Aden crater, where he and his progeny, tempted by Iblis, erected the first fire-temple. It certainly deserves to be the sepulchre of the first murderer. The worship, however, was probably imported from India, where Agni (the fire god) was, as the Vedas prove, the object of mans earliest adoration. [FN#5] The popular legend of this gate is, that when Abraham and his son were ordered to rebuild the Kaabah, they found the spot occupied by an old woman. She consented to remove her house on condition that the key of the new temple should be entrusted to her and to her descendants for ever and ever. The origin of this is, that Benu Shaybah means the sons of an old woman as well as descendants of Shaybah. And history tells us that the Benu Shaybah are derived from one Shaybah (bin Osman, bin Talhah, bin Shaybah, bin Talhah, bin Abd al-Dar), who was sent by Muawiyah to make some alterations in the Kaabah. According to others, the Kaabah key was committed to the charge of Osman bin Talhah by the Prophet. [FN#6] The Moslem in circumambulation presents his left shoulder; the Hindus Pradakshina consists in walking round with the right side towards the fane or idol. Possibly the former may be a modification of the latter, which would appear to be the original form of the rite. Its conjectural significance is an imitation of the procession of the heavenly bodies, the motions of the spheres, and the dances of the angels. These are also imitated in the circular whirlings of the Darwayshes. And Al-Shahristani informs us that the Arab philosophers believed this sevenfold circumambulation to be symbolical of the motion of the planets round the sun. It was adopted by the Greeks and Romans, whose Ambarvalia and Amburbalia appear to be eastern superstitions, introduced by Numa, or by the priestly line of princes, into their pantheism. And our processions round the parish preserve the form of the ancient rites, whose life is long since fled. Moslem moralists have not failed to draw spiritual food from this mass of materialism. To circuit the Bayt Ullah, said the Pir Raukhan (As. Soc. vol. xi. and Dabistan, vol. iii., Miyan Bayazid), and to be free from wickedness, and crime, and quarrels, is the duty enjoined by religion. But to circuit the house of the friend of Allah (i.e. the heart), to combat bodily propensities, and to worship the Angels, is the business of the (mystic) path. Thus Saadi, in his sermons,which remind the Englishman of poor Yorick,He who travels to the Kaabah on foot makes a circuit of the Kaabah, but he who performs the pilgrimage of the Kaabah in his heart is encircled by the Kaabah. And the greatest Moslem divines sanction this visible representation of an invisible and heavenly shrine, by declaring that, without a material medium, it is impossible for man to worship the Eternal Spirit. [FN#7] The Mutawwif, or Dalil, is the guide at Meccah. [FN#8] In A.D. 1674 some wretch smeared the Black Stone with impurity, and every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard. The Persians, says Burckhardt, were suspected of this sacrilege, and now their ill-fame has spread far; at Alexandria they were described to me as a people who defile the Kaabah. It is scarcely necessary to say that a Shiah, as well as a Sunni, would look upon such an action with lively horror. The people of Meccah, however, like the Madani, have turned the circumstance to their own advantage, and make an occasional avanie. Thus, nine or ten years ago, on the testimony of a boy who swore that he saw the inside of the Kaabah defiled by a Persian, they rose up, cruelly beat the schismatics, and carried them off to their peculiar quarter the Shamiyah, forbidding their ingress to the Kaabah. Indeed, till Mohammed Alis time, the Persians rarely ventured upon a pilgrimage, and even now that man is happy who gets over it without a beating. The defilement of the Black Stone was probably the work of some Jew or Greek, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry. [FN#9] Prayer is granted at fourteen places besides Al-Multazem, viz.:
1. At the place of circumambulation. 2. Under the Mizab, or spout of the Kaabah. 3. Inside the Kaabah. 4. At the well Zemzem. 5. Behind Abrahams place of prayer. 6 and 7. On Mounts Safa and Marwah. 8. During the ceremony called Al-Sai. 9. Upon Mount Arafat. 10. At Muzdalifah. 11. In Muna. 12. During the devil-stoning. 13. On first seeing the Kaabah. 14. At the Hatim or Hijr. [FN#10] The former is the 109th, the latter the 112th chapter of the Koran (I have translated it in a previous volume). [FN#11] These superstitions, I must remark, belong only to the vulgar. [FN#12] Strictly speaking we ought, after this, to have performed the ceremony called Al-Sai, or the running seven times between Mounts Safa and Marwah. Fatigue put this fresh trial completely out of the question. [FN#13] I have been diffuse in my description of this vestibule, as it is the general way of laying out a ground-floor at Meccah. During the pilgrimage time the lower hall is usually converted into a shop for the display of goods, especially when situated in a populous quarter. [FN#14] This is equivalent to throwing oneself upon the sofa in Europe. Only in the East it asserts a decided claim to superiority; the West would scarcely view it in that light. [FN#15] Ibn Haukal begins his cosmography with Meccah because the temple of the Lord is situated there, and the holy Kaabah is the navel of the earth, and Meccah is styled in sacred writ the parent city, or the mother of towns. Unfortunately, Ibn Haukal, like most other Moslem travellers and geographers, says no more about Meccah. [FN#16] To distinguish it from the Jiyad (above the cemetery Al-Maala) over which Khalid entered Meccah. Some topographers call the Jiyad upon which the fort is built the lesser, and apply greater to Jiyad Amir, the hill north of Meccah. [FN#17] The Meccans, however, do not fail to boast of its strength; and has stood some sieges. [FN#18] In the Mandal, or palm-divination, a black slave is considered the best subject. European travellers have frequently remarked their nervous sensibility. In Abyssinia the maladies called bouda and tigritiya appear to depend upon some obscure connection between a weak impressionable brain and the strong will of a feared and hated racethe blacksmiths.
[p.178]CHAPTER XXVIII.
THE CEREMONIES OF THE YAUM AL-TARWIYAH, OR THE FIRST DAY.
AT ten A.M., on the 8th Zul Hijjah, A.H. 1269 (Monday, 12th Sept., 1853), habited in our Ihram, or pilgrim garbs, we mounted the litter. Shaykh Masud had been standing at the door from dawn-time, impatient to start before the Damascus and the Egyptian caravans made the road dangerous. Our delay arose from the tyrannical conduct of the boy Mohammed, who insisted upon leaving his little nephew behind. It was long before he yielded. I then placed the poor child, who was crying bitterly, in the litter between us, and at last we started.
We followed the road by which the Caravans entered Meccah. It was covered with white-robed pilgrims, some few wending their way on foot[FN#1]; others riding, and all men barefooted and bareheaded. Most of the wealthier classes mounted asses. The scene was, as usual, one of strange contrasts: Badawin bestriding swift dromedaries; Turkish dignitaries on fine horses; the most picturesque beggars, and the most uninteresting Nizam. Not a little wrangling mingled with the loud bursts of Talbiyat. Dead animals dotted the ground, and carcasses had been cast into a dry tank, the Birkat al-Shami which caused every Badawi to
[p.179] hold his nose.[FN#2] Here, on the right of the road, the poorer pilgrims, who could not find houses, had erected huts, and pitched their ragged tents. Traversing the suburb Al-Mabdah (Maabadah), in a valley between the two barren prolongations of Kaykaan and Khandamah, we turned to the north-east, leaving on the left certain barracks of Turkish soldiery, and the negro militia here stationed, with the Saniyat Kudaa in the background. Then, advancing about 3000 paces over rising ground, we passed by the conical head of Jabal Nur,[FN#3] and entered the plain of many names.[FN#4] It contained nothing but a few whitewashed walls, surrounding places of prayer, and a number of stone cisterns, some well preserved, others in ruins. All, however, were dry, and water-vendors crowded the roadside. Gravel and lumps of granite grew there like grass, and from under every large stone, as Shaykh Masud took a delight in showing, a small scorpion, with tail curled over its back, fled, Parthian-like, from the invaders of its home. At eleven A.M., ascending a Mudarraj, or flight of stone steps, about thirty yards broad, we passed without difficulty, for we were in advance of the caravans, over the Akabah, or Steeps,[FN#5] and the narrow, hill-girt entrance, to the low gravel basin in which Muna lies.
[p.180] Muna, more classically called Mina,[FN#6] is a place of considerable sanctity. Its three standing miracles are these: The pebbles thrown at the Devil return by angelic agency to whence they came; during the three Days of Drying Meat rapacious beasts and birds cannot prey there; and, lastly, flies do not settle upon the articles of food exposed so abundantly in the bazars.[FN#7] During pilgrimage, houses are let for an exorbitant sum, and it becomes a Worlds Fair of Moslem merchants. At all other seasons it is almost deserted, in consequence, says popular superstition, of the Rajm or (diabolical) lapidation.[FN#8] Distant about three miles from Meccah, it is a long, narrow, straggling village, composed of mud and stone houses of one or two stories, built in the common Arab style. Traversing a narrow street, we passed on the left the Great Devil, which shall be described at a future time. After a quarter of an hours halt, spent over pipes and coffee, we came to an open space, where stands the Mosque Al-Khayf. Here, according to some Arabs, Adam lies, his head being at one end of one long wall, and his feet at another, whilst the dome covers his omphalic region. Grand preparations for fireworks were being made in this square; I especially remarked a fire-ship,