A careful and critical study of Islām will, we think, convince any candid mind that at first Muḥammad intended to construct his religion on the lines of the Old Testament. Abraham, the true Muslim, was his prototype, Moses his law-giver, and Jerusalem his Qiblah. But circumstances were ever wont to change not only the Prophet’s revelations, but also his moral standards. Makkah became the Qiblah; and the spectacle of the Muslim world bowing in the direction of a black stone, whilst they worship the one God, marks Islām, with its Makkan pilgrimage, as a religion of compromise.

Apologists of Islām have endeavoured to shield Muḥammad from the solemn charge of having “forged the name of God,” but we know of nothing which can justify the act of giving the stupid and unmeaning ceremonies of the pilgrimage all the force and solemnity of a divine enactment.

The Wahhābīs, the Puritans of Islām, regard the circumambulation of the Prophet’s tomb as superstitious (as shirk, or associating something with God, in fact), but how can they justify the foolish ceremonies of the ḥajj? If reverence for the Prophet’s tomb is shirk, what are the runnings at aṣ-Ṣafā and al-Marwah, the stonings of the pillars, and the kissings of the black stone? No Muslim has ever yet attempted to give a spiritual explanation of the ceremonies of the Makkan pilgrimage, for in attempting to do so he would be charged with the heresy of shirk!

Mr. W. S. Blunt in his Future of Islām, has given some interesting statistics regarding the pilgrimage to Makkah in the year 1880, which he obtained during a residence at Cairo, Damascus, and Jiddah. The figures, he says, are taken principally from an official record kept for some years past at Jiddah, and checked as far as European subjects are concerned, by reference to the consular agents residing there.

Table of the Mecca Pilgrimage of 1880.

Nationality of Pilgrims. Arriving by Sea. Arriving by Land. Total of Mussulman population represented.
Ottoman subjects including pilgrims from Syria and Irak, but not from Egypt or Arabiaproper 8,500 1,000 22,000,000
Egyptians 5,000 1,000 5,000,000
Mogrebbins (“people of the West”), that is to say, Arabic-speaking Mussalmans fromthe Barbary States, Tripoli, Tunis, Algiers, and Morocco. These are always classedtogether and are not easily distinguishable from each other6,000 — 18,000,000
Arabs from Yemen 3,000 — 2,500,000
Arabs,, from,, Oman and Hadramaut 3,000 — 3,000,000
Arabs,, from,, Nejd, Assir, and Hasa, most of them Wahhabites— 5,000 4,000,000
Arabs,, from,, Hejaz, of these perhaps 10.000 Meccans— 22,000 2,000,000
Negroes from Soudan 2,000 — 10,000,000(?)
Negroes,, from,, Zanzibar 1,000 — 1,500,000
Malabari from the Cape of Good Hope 150 —
Persians 6,000 2,500 8,000,000
Indians (British subjects) 15,000 — 40,000,000
Malays, chiefly from Java and Dutch subjects12,000 — 30,000,000
Chinese 100 — 15,000,000
Mongols from the Khanates, included in the Ottoman Haj— — 6,000,000
Lazis, Circassians, Tartars, &c. (Russian subjects), included in the Ottoman Haj— — 5,000,000
Independent Afghans and Beluchis, included in the Indian and Persian Hajs— — 3,000,000
Total of pilgrims present at Arafat 93,250.
Total Census of Islam 175,000,000

ḤAJJATU ʾL-WADĀʿ (حجة الوداع‎). The last or farewell pilgrimage performed by Muḥammad, and which is taken as the model of an orthodox ḥajj. It is called the Ḥajju ʾl-Akbar, or Greater Pilgrimage, in the Qurʾān, [Sūrah ix. 3]. (See Mishkāt, book xi. ch. iii., and Muir’s Life of Mahomet.) It is supposed to have commenced February 23, A.D. 632.

ḤAJJ MABRŪR (حج مبرور‎). An approved or accepted pilgrimage (Mishkāt, book xi. ch. i. pt. 2). A pilgrimage to Makkah performed according to the conditions of Muslim law.

ḤAKAM (حكم‎). An arbitrator appointed by a qāẓī to settle disputes. It is not lawful to appoint either a slave or an unbeliever, or a slanderer, or an infant, as an arbitrator. (Hidāyah, vol. ii. p. 638.)