or Mountain of Light, because there Mohammed’s mind was first illuminated. The Cave of Revelation is still shown. It looks upon a wild scene. Eastward and southward the vision is limited by abrupt hills. In the other directions there is a dreary landscape, with here and there a stunted acacia or a clump of brushwood growing on rough ground, where stony glens and valleys of white sand, most of them water-courses after the rare rains, separate black, grey, and yellow rocks.
Passing over El Akabah (the Steeps), an important spot in classical Arab history, we entered Muna, a hot hollow three or four miles from the barren valley of Meccah. It is a long, narrow, straggling village of mud and stone houses, single storied and double storied, built in the common Arab style. We were fated to see it again. At noon we passed Mugdalifah, or the Approacher, known to El Islam as the Minaret without the Mosque, and thus distinguished from a neighbouring building, the Mosque without the Minaret. There is something peculiarly impressive in the tall, solitary, tower springing from the desolate valley of gravel. No wonder that the old Arab conquerors loved to give the high-sounding name of this oratory to distant points in their extensive empire!
Here, as we halted for the noon prayer, the Damascus caravan appeared in all its glory. The mahmal, or litter, sent by the Sultan to represent his presence, no longer a framework as on the line of march, now
flashed in the sun all gold and green, and the huge white camel seemed to carry it with pride. Around the moving host of peaceful pilgrims hovered a crowd of mounted Bedouins armed to the teeth. These people often visit Arafat for blood revenge; nothing can be more sacrilegious than murder at such a season, but they find the enemy unprepared. As their draperies floated in the wind and their faces were swathed and veiled with their head-kerchiefs, it was not always easy to distinguish the sex of the wild beings who hurried past at speed. The women were unscrupulous, and many were seen emulating the men in reckless riding, and in striking with their sticks at every animal in their way.
Presently, after safely threading the gorge called the pass of the Two Rugged Hills, and celebrated for accidents, we passed between the two “signs”—whitewashed pillars, or, rather, tall towers, their walls surmounted with pinnacles. They mark the limits of the Arafat Plain—the Standing-Ground, as it is called. Here is sight of the Holy Hill of Arafat, standing boldly out from the fair blue sky, and backed by the azure peaks of Taif. All the pilgrim host raised loud shouts of “Labbayk!” The noise was that of a storm.
We then sought our quarters in the town of tents scattered over two or three miles of plain at the southern foot of the Holy Hill, and there we passed a turbulent night of prayer.
I estimated the total number of devotees to be fifty thousand; usually it may amount to eighty thousand.
The Arabs, however, believe that the total of those “standing on Arafat” cannot be counted, and that if less than six hundred thousand human beings are gathered, the angels descend and make up the sum. Even in A.D. 1853 my Moslem friends declared that a hundred and fifty thousand immortal beings were present in mortal shape.
The Mount of Mercy, which is also called Tebel Ilál, or Mount of Wrestling in Prayer, is physically considered a mass of coarse granite, split into large blocks and thinly covered with a coat of withered thorns. It rises abruptly to a height of a hundred and eighty to two hundred feet from the gravelly flat, and it is separated by a sandy vale from the last spur of the Taif hills. The dwarf wall encircling it gives the barren eminence a somewhat artificial look, which is not diminished by the broad flight of steps winding up the southern face, and by the large stuccoed platform near the summit, where the preacher delivers the “Sermon of the Standing.”
Arafat means “recognition,” and owes its name and honours to a well-known legend. When our first parents were expelled from Paradise, which, according to Moslems, is in the lowest of the seven heavens, Adam descended at Ceylon, Eve upon Arafat. The former, seeking his wife, began a journey to which the earth owes its present mottled appearance. Wherever he placed his foot a town arose in the fulness of time; between the strides all has remained country. Wandering for many years he came to the