Of European descriptions of Mecca from personal observation the best is Burckhardt’s Travels in Arabia (cited above from the 8vo ed., 1829). The Travels of Aly Bey (Badia, London, 1816) describe a visit in 1807; Burton’s Pilgrimage (3rd ed., 1879) often supplements Burckhardt; Von Maltzan’s Wallfahrt nach Mekka (1865) is lively but very slight. ‘Abd el-Razzāq’s report to the government of India on the pilgrimage of 1858 is specially directed to sanitary questions; C. Snouck-Hurgronje, Mekka (2 vols., and a collection of photographs, The Hague, 1888-1889), gives a description of the Meccan sanctuary and of the public and private life of the Meccans as observed by the author during a sojourn in the holy city in 1884-1885 and a political history of Mecca from native sources from the Hegira till 1884. For the pilgrimage see particularly Snouck-Hurgronje, Het Mekkaansche Feest (Leiden, 1880).
(W. R. S.)
[1] A variant of the name Makkah is Bakkah (Sur. iii. 90; Bakrī, 155 seq.). For other names and honorific epithets of the city see Bakrī, ut supra, Azraqī, p. 197, Yāqūt iv. 617 seq. The lists are in part corrupt, and some of the names (Kūthā and ‘Arsh or ‘Ursh, “the huts”) are not properly names of the town as a whole.
[2] Mecca, says one of its citizens, in Wāqidī (Kremer’s ed., p. 196, or Muh. in Med. p. 100), is a settlement formed for trade with Syria in summer and Abyssinia in winter, and cannot continue to exist if the trade is interrupted.
[3] The details are variously related. See Bīrūnī, p. 328 (E. T., p. 324); Asma‘i in Yāqūt, iii. 705, iv. 416, 421; Azraqī, p. 129 seq.; Bakrī, p. 661. Jebel Kabkab is a great mountain occupying the angle between W. Namān and the plain of Arafa. The peak is due north of Sheddād, the hamlet which Burckhardt (i. 115) calls Shedad. According to Azraqī, p. 80, the last shrine visited was that of the three trees of Uzzā in W. Nakhla.
[4] So we are told by Bīrūnī, p. 62 (E. T., 73).
[5] Wāqidī, ed. Kremer, pp. 20, 21; Muh. in Med. p. 39.
[6] The older fairs were not entirely deserted till the troubles of the last days of the Omayyads (Azraqī, p. 131).
[7] This is the cross-road traversed by Burckhardt (i. 109), and described by him as cut through the rocks with much labour.