We stood opposite these three windows, successively, beginning with that of the Prophet, recited the blessings, which we were directed to pronounce “with awe and fear and love.” The ritual is very complicated, and the stranger must engage a guide technically called a muzawwir, or visitation-maker. He is always a son of the Holy City, and Shaykh Hamid was mine. Many a piercing eye was upon me: the people probably supposed that I was an Ajemi or Persian, and these heretics have often attempted to defile the tombs of the two Caliphs.
When the prayers were at an end, I was allowed to look through the Prophet’s window. After straining my eyes for a time, the oil lamps shedding but a dim light, I saw a narrow passage leading round the chamber. The inner wall is variously represented to be made of stone planking or unbaked bricks. One
sees nothing but thin coverings, a curtain of handsome silk and cotton brocade, green, with long white letters worked into it. Upon the hangings were three inscriptions in characters of gold, informing readers that behind there lie Allah’s Prophet and the two first Caliphs. The exact place of Mohammed’s tomb is, moreover, distinguished by a large pearl rosary and a peculiar ornament, the celebrated Kankab el Durri, or constellation of pearls; it is suspended breast high to the curtain. This is described to be a “brilliant star set in diamonds and pearls” placed in the dark that man’s eye may be able to endure its splendours; the vulgar believe it to be a “jewel of the jewels of Paradise.” To me it suggested the round glassy stoppers used for the humbler sort of decanters, but then I think the same of the Koh-i-Nur.
I must allude to the vulgar story of Mohammed’s steel coffin suspended in mid-air between two magnets. The myth has won a world-wide reputation, yet Arabia has never heard of it. Travellers explain it in two ways. Niebuhr supposes it to have risen from the rude ground-plan drawings sold to strangers, and mistaken by them for elevations. William Banks believes that the work popularly described as hanging unsupported in the mosque of Omar at Jerusalem was confounded with the Prophet’s tomb at El Medinah by Christians, who until very lately could not have seen either of these Moslem shrines.
A book which I published upon the subject of my pilgrimage gives in detail my reason for believing
that the site of Mohammed’s sepulture is doubtful as that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.[4] They are, briefly, these four: From the earliest days the shape of the Prophet’s tomb has never been generally known in El Islam. The accounts of the grave given by the learned are discrepant. The guardianship of the spot was long in the hands of schismatics (the Beni Husayu). And lastly, I cannot but look upon the tale of the blinding light which surrounds the Prophet’s tomb, current for ages past, and still universally believed upon the authority of attendant eunuchs who must know its falsehood as a priestly glory intended to conceal a defect.
To that book also I must refer my readers for a full description of the minor holy places at El Medinah. They are about fifty in number, and of these about a dozen are generally visited. The principal of these are, first, El Bakia (the Country of the Saints), to the east of the city; on the last day some seventy thousand, others say a hundred thousand, holy men with faces like moons shall arise from it; the second is the Apostle’s mosque at Kubas, the first temple built in El Islam; and the third is a visitation to the tomb of Mohammed’s paternal uncle, Hamzeh, the “Lord of Martyrs,” who was slain fighting for the faith in A.D. 625.
A few observations concerning the little-known capital of the Northern Hejaz may not be unacceptable.
Medinah El Nahi (the City of the Prophet) is usually
called by Moslems, for brevity, El Medinah, or the City by Excellence. It lies between the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth degrees of north latitude, corresponding therefore with Central Mexico; and being high raised above the sea, it may be called a tierra temprada. My predecessor, Burckhardt, found the water detestable. I thought it good. The winter is long and rigorous, hence partly the fair complexion of its inhabitants, who rival in turbulence and fanaticism their brethren of Meccah.