[Illustration: THE HAREM, SHOWING THE KA’BAH, AND THE OTHER SANCTUARIES
WITHIN THE HAREM.
(_From an old Indian Illustration._)]
WITH THE
PILGRIMS
TO MECCA
THE GREAT PILGRIMAGE
OF A.H. 1319; A.D. 1902
BY HADJI KHAN, M.R.A.S.
(_Special Correspondent of the “Morning Post”_)
AND WILFRID SPARROY
(_Author of “Persian Children of the Royal Family”_)
WITH AN INTRODUCTION
BY PROFESSOR A. VAMBÉRY
LONDON AND NEW YORK
JOHN LANE, MDCCCCV
PRINTED BY W. H. WHITE AND SON
THE ABBEY PRESS, EDINBURGH
TO
THE HONOURABLE OLIVER A. BORTHWICK
... OH, NEVER STAR
WAS LOST HERE BUT IT ROSE AFAR!
LOOK EAST, WHERE WHOLE NEW THOUSANDS ARE!
The Authors take this opportunity of renewing their acknowledgments of
all they owe to the Editor of _The Morning Post_, to whose friendly
interest and encouragement the success of the serial publication, under
the title of the “Great Pilgrimage,” was in a considerable measure due.
In tendering to him their hearty thanks, they feel it would be scarcely
fair to themselves were they to allow the reader to take this, the
present fruit of their respective labours, to be a mere republication.
It is something far more than that, one-fifth of the book, and that the
most interesting part of all, being absolutely new; while the whole of
the remainder has been not only carefully revised, but also recast,
and, to some extent, rewritten. But the reader owes the new material to
Mr. Dunn’s kindness in relinquishing his right to it in order that it
might appear for the first time in the pages of “With the Pilgrims to
Mecca.”
_28th April 1904._
MY OWN EAST!
HOW NEARER GOD WE WERE! HE GLOWS ABOVE
WITH SCARCE AN INTERVENTION, PRESSES CLOSE
AND PALPITATINGLY, HIS SOUL O’ER OURS;
WE FEEL HIM, NOR BY PAINFUL REASON KNOW!
THE EVERLASTING MINUTE OF CREATION
IS FELT THERE.
ROBERT BROWNING.
INTRODUCTION
Amongst the varied and manifold impressions of my long and intimate
connection with the Mohammedan world none is more lively and more
interesting than my experiences with the Hajees, the dear, pious and
good-natured companions on many of my wanderings in Moslem Asia. We in
Europe can hardly have an idea of the zeal and delight which animate
the pilgrim to the holy places of Arabia, not only during his sojourn
in Mekka and Medina, not only whilst making the Tawaf (procession
round the Kaaba), not only during the excursion to the valley of Mina,
where the exclamation of “Lebeitk yá Allah” rends the air round the
Arafat--but long before he has started on his arduous and formerly
very dangerous journey to the birthplace of Islam. The Hadj, being one
of the four fundamental commands of Islam, is looked upon by every
true believer as a religious duty the fulfilment of which is always
before his eyes, and if prevented by want of means or by infirmity he
will strive to find a Wekil (representative), whom he provides with
necessary funds to undertake the journey and to pray in his name at
the Kaaba, and when the Wekil has returned he hands over the Ihram (a
shirt-like dress in which the pilgrimage is performed) to his sender
who will use it as his shroud, and appear before the Almighty in
the garb used on the Hadj. The further the Moslem lives from Arabia
the greater becomes the passion to visit the holy places of his
religion, and if there was a country in which the desire to fulfil
this holy command was most fervently cultivated and executed, it was
decidedly Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan, where nearly two-thirds
of the pilgrims formerly perished, partly in consequence of epidemics
and inclemency of weather, partly also at the hands of robbers or
through thirst in the desert. And yet these Turk or Tartar Hadjees
often disregard all dangers and perils of a long journey, and begin
to economise the money necessary for travelling expenses many years
before they have set out, for a man destitute of means is not allowed
to undertake the Hadj, the same prohibition exists also for a man who
is not bodily strong enough, or who has to provide for a family left
back at home. It is true, in accordance with the saying “Hem ziaret hem
tidjaret” (Pilgrimage and Business together), there are people, who
connect trade with religion, but their devotion is often criticised,
whereas the pure religious intention meets everywhere with the greatest
praise and veneration, and a successfully accomplished visit to the
holy places of Arabia makes a Mohammedan respected not only in his
community but also in the outlying districts of his country. On his
return journey from Mekka and Medina the Hajee gets an official
reception all along his route. He is met by young and old, by rich and
poor, everybody tries to rub his eyes or his cheeks to the dress of the
man, in order to catch an atom of the dust coming from the Kaaba or
from the grave of the Prophet, and if the Hajee is the bearer of some
_Khaki-Mubarak_ (_i.e._, blessed earth from the grave of Mohammed), or
if he is in possession of a small bottle of “Zemzem” (the holy fountain
in the precinct of the Kaaba), there is no end and limit to the
pressing throng around him. I have seen people kissing the footsteps
of such a pilgrim, embracing and petting him, and what struck me most
was the scene where Kirghis or Turkoman nomads cried like children on
seeing one of these Hajees, and when they began to quarrel, nay, to
fight, for the opportunity to bestow hospitality on a returning Hajee,
be he even an Uzbeg or a Tajik, whom they otherwise dislike.
Yes, the Haj is a most wonderful institution in the interest of the
strength, unity and spiritual power of Islam; it is a kind of religious
Parliament and a gathering place for the followers of the prophet,
where the sacred Hermandad is fostered despite all differences of race
and colour, and whereas the temple in Jerusalem does often become the
cockpit of different Christian sects, and the arena of bloody fights,
which would fatally end without the intercession of the Moslem soldiers
of the Padishah, we meet with perfect peace and concord in the court of
the Kaaba, where the four sects have got their separate places without
interfering with each other, and where Hanefites, Shafaites, Malekites
and Hanbalites pay simultaneously their veneration to the founder of
their religion. Even the Shiite Persian is not molested as long as he
does not offend the believers by an ostentatious exhibition of his
schismatic views, what he rarely does, for _dissimulation_ is not
prohibited according to the tenets of the Shiites.
The foregoing remarks about the Haj have been quoted here with the
intention to realise the importance of this religious custom of Islam,
and particularly to show how necessary it is to know and to appreciate
duly the political, social and ethical qualities of this precept
ordained by the prophet.
Well, in order to gain full information on this subject, we have been
in need of an account of the Haj written by a Mohammedan who is not
attracted by curiosity, but by religious piety, who had free access
to every place, who is not hampered by fear of being discovered as
a Christian, and who is besides a shrewd observer. These essential
qualities I find in Mr. Haji Khan, M.R.A.S., the pilgrim, who calls
himself also “Haji Raz” (the mystery Haji). It may be well said that
Christian travellers like Burkhard, Burton, Maltzan, and others, have
exhausted the subject relating to the holy places of Islam, but a
Mohammedan sees more and better than any foreigner, and I do not go too
far when I say that Mr. Haji Khan, with his thorough English education,
would have been more fitted to describe, unaided, the life and the
manners of the Haj, than was his Turkish fellow-believer, Emin Effemdi,
author of a Turkish account of the same topic.
I daresay it will be the case with many other subjects relating to
the actual and past features of the Eastern life, if natives will be
only educated to describe the peculiarities of their own nations and
creeds, and for this reason it is desirable that the number of scholars
like Mr. Haji Khan should increase, and that this present book,
written in collaboration with Mr. Wilfrid Sparroy, should meet with a
well-deserved reception.
Great credit is due to Mr. Wilfrid Sparroy, to whose high qualities as
a writer, this joint production owes so much. Both Mr. Haji Khan and
Mr. Wilfrid Sparroy are to be congratulated on the results of their
labours: they have succeeded in bringing the East nearer to the West.
A. VAMBÉRY.
CONTENTS
PART I
A PERSIAN PILGRIM IN THE MAKING--
PAGE
1. THE MESSAGE OF THE PROPHET 21
2. CONDITIONS OF PILGRIMAGE 31
3. FORBIDDEN VIANDS 32
4. THE WORK OF PURIFICATION 33
5. PRAYERS 35
6. ASPECTS OF SOCIAL ISLÁM 37
7. STORIES OF THE MUSLIM MOONS 47
8. PERSIAN SÚFÍISM--PERSIAN SHIAHISM IN ITS
RELATION TO THE PERSIAN PASSION-DRAMA 62
PART II
THE STORY OF THE PILGRIMAGE--
CHAP. I. LONDON TO JIDDAH 81
CHAP. II. FROM JIDDAH TO MECCA 102
CHAP. III. WITHIN THE HAREM--SOME REMARKS
ON THE ORTHODOX SECTS OF ISLÁM 111
CHAP. IV. COMPASSING OF THE KA’BAH 126
CHAP. V. THE COURSE OF PERSEVERANCE 140
CHAP. VI. SCENE IN AN EATING-HOUSE--VISIT
TO THE KA’BAH 153
CHAP. VII. ON THE ROAD TO ARAFAT 173
CHAP. VIII. ON THE ROAD TO ARAFAT (_concluded_) 193
CHAP. IX. ARAFAT DAY: NIGHT 212
CHAP. X. ARAFAT DAY: DAYBREAK 223
CHAP. XI. ARAFAT DAY: FORENOON AND
AFTERNOON 234
CHAP. XII. THE DAY OF VICTIMS: FROM SUNDOWN
TO SUNSET. THE DAYS OF DRYING FLESH 245
PART III
MECCAN SCENES AND SKETCHES--
CHAP. I. THE MECCAN BAZAARS 255
CHAP. II. THE TALISMAN-MONGER 266
CHAP. III. SEYYID ’ALÍ’S STORY OF HIS REDEMPTION 280
CHAP. IV. HEALING BY FAITH 289
APPENDIX. SOME REFLECTIONS ON THE EXISTENCE
OF A SLAVE MARKET IN MECCA 299
INDEX. 309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
THE HAREM, SHOWING THE KA’BAH, AND THE OTHER
SANCTUARIES WITHIN THE HAREM _Frontispiece_
COPIES OF THE KURÁN WORN _en bandoulière_ BY
MUSLIMS WHEN TRAVELLING OR ON PILGRIMAGE 39
A PERSIAN SUFÍ OF THE ORDER OF THE LATE
SEPHI ’ALÍ SHÁH 65
A GROUP OF MIXED PILGRIMS 85
A PILGRIM “AT SEA”--SUEZ RAILWAY STATION 85
PREPARING TO EMBARK AT SUEZ 91
PILGRIMS EMBARKING AT SUEZ 99
BEFORE WEIGHING ANCHOR AT SUEZ 99
A MOORISH GENTLEMAN IN MOORISH DRESS 121
THE POORER SIDE OF EGYPTIAN MUSLIMS 143
PUTTING ON IHRÁM AT JIDDAH 155
MUSSAH STREET AT MECCA 155
AN EGYPTIAN COFFEE-HOUSE FREQUENTED BY THE POOR 161
AN EGYPTIAN DONKEY AND ITS DRIVER 183
THE MUSICIAN CAMEL CAVALCADE 201
WATER-CARRIERS OF MECCA 207
(_a_) THE PASHA OF HEJAZ; (_b_) THE AMINUS-SURREH 207
THE SHERÍF OF MECCA IN HIS UNIFORM 215
A LEARNED MUSSULMAN OF INDIA 229
PERSIAN PILGRIMS FROM TABRIZ, HAVING TEA ON
BOARD THE STEAMER 239
DISEMBARKING AT JIDDAH 249
PILGRIMS AT JIDDAH 249
AN EGYPTIAN GROCER 267
A PERSIAN PROFESSOR OF THEOLOGY 291
AN ARAB SHEYKH OF THE TOWN 297
PART I
ERRATA
Page 22, line 34, _For_ Jellalu’d-dín’s “Al Beidáwí,” _read_
Al-Beidáwí’s commentary.
Page 31, line 10, _For_ “Hájí Ráz,” _read_ Hadji Khan.
Page 31, line 11, _For_ Chapter V., Part III., _read_ Appendix.
Page 32, line 12, _For_ formerly, _read_ formally.
{Page 57, line 1, _For_ 1320, _read_ 1319.
{Page 245, line 19, _For_ 1320, _read_ 1319.
Page 69, line 7, _For_ uncle, _read_ father-in-law.
Page 69, lines 29-30, _For_ too rash and too indiscreet, _read_
too forbearing and too magnanimous.
{Page 72, line 12, _For_ daughter Fatima, _read_ sister Zainab.
{Page 76, line 13, _For_ daughter Fatima, _read_ sister Zainab.
Page 93, line 21, _For_ Yásuf, _read_ Yûsuf.
Page 93, lines 22-23, _For_ Al Beyyid, _read_ Al Beidáwí.
{Page 115, line 1, _For_ Tomb of Abraham, _read_ Station of
Abraham.
{Page 130, line 28, _For_ Tomb of Abraham, _read_ Station of
Abraham.
Page 117, line 9, _For_ Merú, _read_ Merve.
Page 134, line 8, _For_ ordnance, _read_ ordinance.
Page 166, line 32, _For_ mosque, _read_ temple.
Page 199, line 19, _For_ Tabbál, _read_ Tabl.
Page 237, line 12, _For_ Kharnum, _read_ Khanum.
Page 237, line 12, _For_ Mrs. Zobeideh, _read_ Lady Zobeideh.
Page 251, line 4, _Omit_ the Merciful and Compassionate.
Page 266, line 20, _For_ God is just, _read_ God is Great.
WITH THE PILGRIMS TO MECCA
PART I
A PERSIAN PILGRIM IN THE MAKING
I.--MESSAGE OF THE PROPHET.
The day before I left England for Persia some seven years ago, I went
to see my uncle, the author of the “Siege of Metz.” On saying good-bye
he made me a present of the Kurán. “Here,” said he, “is the thing to
be read. It will be the best introduction to the new life awaiting you
in the East. If you can lay hold of the spirit of this book you will
not be alone out there, but among men and brothers, for the Kurán is a
sincere revelation of much that is eternally true.” I never saw George
Robinson again: in less than a week--before I had left Paris--his
spirit had passed to the bourne whence all revelations come, and where
truth, in its completeness, will be revealed.
Now, it should be the critic’s aim, in dealing with all true books, to
place himself on the same plane as the author, and to look in the same
direction, fixing the same end. This is more especially true of what
his attitude should be towards a message that has been held sacred by
countless millions for more than thirteen hundred years. The merits
of the Kurán and the far-reaching reforms of the Prophet of Islám can
be appreciated worthily only by such men as have taken the trouble to
acquaint themselves with the idolatrous superstitions of the Arabians
in the time of Ignorance, and with the empty logical jangling of the
rival Syrian Christian sects at the close of the Sixth Century. And the
critic having grasped the lifelessness of religious practice before
the coming of Muhammad, would be wise to reveal, first of all, what
there is of truth, and to spread what light there is in the written
word of the great reformer, abandoning to the bigot and the purblind
the less fruitful occupation of stirring in the cauldron of religious
controversy. To that end, indeed, it were not amiss that he should
cultivate his imagination, for the imaginative have turned the corner
of their narrower selves, and theirs is an ever-widening vision. To
those who, living by the word of Christ, diffuse darkness, Muhammad
will ever be either a charlatan or an unscrupulous man of the sword.
Well, the Prophet’s followers must take heart of grace. History itself
as well as the Kurán has proclaimed the charges to be false.
The keynote to Muhammad’s character is sincerity. Sincerity rings
out clear enough in every word of his book. He was a man in whom
the fire-thought of the desert burned so fiercely that he could not
help being sincere. He was so truly sincere, indeed, as to be wholly
unconscious of his sincerity. Now, of all the stories related of him
none affords a more convincing proof of his thorough honesty than
the one which shows him to have been, at least once in practice, a
backslider from the high ideal of conduct that he preached. This story,
from Al-Beidáwí’s commentary, is thus related by Sale:
“A certain blind man named Abdallah Ebn Omm Mactúm came and interrupted
Muhammad while he was engaged in earnest discourse with some of the
principal Kuraish, of whose conversion he had hopes; but, the Prophet
taking no notice of him, the blind man, not knowing that Muhammad was
otherwise busied, raised his voice, and said, ‘O apostle of God, teach
me some part of what God hath taught thee’; but Muhammad, vexed at this
interruption, frowned, and turned away from him,” for which he was
reprehended afterwards by his conscience. This episode was the source
of the revelation entitled “He Frowned.” “The Prophet frowned, and
turned aside,” so runs Chapter lxxx. of the Kurán, “because the blind
man came unto him; and how dost thou know whether he shall peradventure
be cleansed from his sins; or whether he shall be admonished, and the
admonition shall profit him? The man who is wealthy thou receivest with
respect; but him who cometh unto thee earnestly seeking his salvation,
and who fearest God, dost thou neglect. By no means shouldst thou act
thus.” We are also told that the Prophet, whenever he saw Ebn Omm
Mactúm after this, showed him marked respect, saying, “The man is
welcome on whose account my Lord hath reprimanded me,” and that he made
him twice Governor of Medina. And yet many still persist in calling
Muhammad a charlatan. Surely a prophet who, in reproving others, spared
not himself, has won the right to be respected as an honest man. For my
part I believe him to have been one whose word was his bond, and whose
hand it had been good to grasp.
As for his having been a mere victorious soldier, he was in the
beginning “precisely in a minority of one.” Your Napoleon finds in
patriotism his most successful recruiting sergeant. But the call
of patriotism had summoned to Muhammad’s standard not a single
recruit, because he was despised by the patriotic (if the Kuraish, the
predominant tribe in Arabia, and the keepers of the Ka’bah, deserved
to be so called) and was rejected by them. Assuredly Muhammad drew the
sword; he was driven to draw it in the end. But how did he get the
sword, and to what purpose did he put it when he had it? Muhammad’s
sword was forged in the furnace of that passionate, human soul of his,
was tempered in the flame of divine compassion, and gave to every
Arab an Empire and a creed. Islám was the sword! The blade of steel
achieved no miracle, it merely drew blood--sufficiently corrupt. It
was the sword of Muhammad’s word which freed the Arab heart from its
vices and fired it with a wider patriotism and a purer faith. His
battle-cry was the declaration of God’s unity; his sword was the faith;
his battlefield the human heart and soul; and his enemy idolatry and
corruption. “Yá Alláh!” and “Yá Muhammad!” carried the Arabian conquest
from Mecca to Granada, and from Arabia to Delhi. The conquering hosts
fought rather with their hearts and with their souls than with their
swords and their strong right hands; inculcating in the conquered no
earthly vanities, as do modern Muhammadan rulers, but the principles of
liberty, solidarity, unity, equality, and compassion.
Forty thousand Arabs, under their famous leader, Sád Vaghás, having
defeated five hundred thousand Persians and overthrown the mighty
Persian Empire, in the battle of Khadasieh, on the plain of Nahavend,
deeply rooted their faith in the heart of the alien race, and then left
her to be ruled by her own people, in accordance with the precepts
of the new revelation. Omar, perhaps the greatest Caliph, is said to
have lived throughout his life on a loaf of barley bread and a cup of
sour milk a day. And Alí’ the Prophet’s son-in-law, whom the Persians
revere as his true successor, lived for no other purpose than to help
the poor and to succour the weak. He was, as Carlyle assures us, a man
worthy of Christian knighthood. So also was his son, Huseyn, whose
glorious martyrdom has endeared him to the hearts of the Persian people.
In the East men are ruled and guided by religious laws and not by
positive ones, so Muhammad’s aim was to make the Arabians free and
united by lessening the sufferings of the poor and by establishing
equality among the people. That these aims and aspirations cannot be
consummated through positive laws alone must be abundantly clear to
every man in the civilised West who has watched the gradual rise among
us of Socialism and the deadly growth of Anarchy. We Western peoples
merely pray that God’s will may be done on earth as it is in Heaven.
Whereas Muhammad, being, as he was, a practical reformer, made it
incumbent on his followers to contribute to the consummation of the
Divine Law by bestowing on the poor a fair share of the things that
they loved.
The very core of the Muhammadan faith lies, as I conceive, in three
broad principles. First, in the declaration of God’s unity. “Say,
God is one God; the eternal God: He begetteth not, neither is He
begotten: and there is not one like unto Him.” This short chapter, as
is well known, is held in particular veneration by the Muhammadans,
and declared, by a tradition of the Prophet, to be equal in value to
a third part of the whole Kurán. It is said to have been revealed
in answer to the Kuraish, who had asked Muhammad concerning the
distinguishing attributes of the God he invited them to worship. For
Muhammad held that all the prophets from the creation of the world have
been Unitarians; that as Moses was a Unitarian so also was Christ; that
Christianity, as practised in Syria, was a break in God’s revelation
of Himself as One, and that he, Muhammad, had been specially chosen by
God to re-admonish mankind of this fundamental truth.
As this ground idea satisfies the Oriental’s reason, so the second,
Islám, that is, resignation from man to God, responds to the inner
voice of his soul, and seems to lead his heart warmly to embrace
the third principle of the Muhammadan faith, which, in the golden
age of the Muhammadan Era, was the means of establishing equality
among the people--I mean the principle of charity, of alms-giving,
of compassion from man to man. Unswerving obedience to the spirit
and the letter of these three laws carried with it the obligation of
unswerving loyalty to the Prophet. When we pray, we Christians, we say
“Give us this day our daily bread.” The Muhammadans, under penalty of
everlasting torment, are obliged to sacrifice, to the poor and needy,
a due proportion of the things that they love--not merely of their
superfluity--with the result that each man among them, by that fact
alone, constitutes himself, as it were, a willing instrument of God’s
will that His Kingdom of Heaven shall reign on earth. Another fact that
proves Muhammad to have been something far more than a man of the sword
is that to this day Muhammadans hail one another on meeting with the
word “Salám” (have peace). Indeed, peace being an essential condition
of undertaking the sacramental Pilgrimage to Mecca, it is unlawful to
wage war during the three months’ journeying of the Muslim lunar year,
namely, in Shavvál, Zú-’l-ka’dah, and Zú-’l-hijjah.
“Contribute out of your subsistence towards the defence of the religion
of God,” says Muhammad, “and throw not yourself with your own hands
into perdition [that is, be not accessory to your own destruction
by neglecting your contributions towards the wars against infidels,
and thereby suffering them to gather strength], and do good, for God
loveth those who do good. Perform the Pilgrimage of Mecca, and the
visitation of God; and if ye be besieged send that offering which shall
be the easiest, and shave not your heads until your offering reacheth
the place of sacrifice. But whoever among you is sick, or is troubled
with any distemper of the head, must redeem the shaving of the head by
fasting, by alms, or by some offering [either by fasting three days, by
feeding six poor people, or by sacrificing a sheep]. But he who findeth
not anything to offer shall fast three days in the Pilgrimage, and
seven when he be returned: these shall be ten days complete. This is
incumbent on him whose family shall not be present at the Holy Temple.”
“The Pilgrimage must be performed in the known months (_i.e._, Shavvál,
Zú-’l-ka’dah, and Zú-’l-hijjah); whosoever therefore purposeth to go
on Pilgrimage therein, let him not know a woman, nor transgress, nor
quarrel in the Pilgrimage. The good which ye do, God knoweth it. Make
provision for your journey, but the best provision is piety, and fear
me, O ye of understanding. It shall be no crime in you if ye seek an
increase from your Lord by trading during the Pilgrimage. And when
ye go in procession from Arafat [a mountain near Mecca] remember God
near the holy monument, and remember Him for that He hath directed
you, though ye were before this of the number of those who go astray.
Therefore go in procession from whence the people go in procession, and
ask pardon of God, for God is gracious and merciful. And when ye have
finished your holy ceremonies, remember God, according as ye remember
your fathers, or with a more reverend commemoration. Yea, remember
God the appointed number of days [three days after slaying the
sacrifices], but if any haste to depart from the Valley of Mina in two
days it shall be no crime in him. And if any tarry longer it shall be
no crime in him--in him who feareth God. Therefore, fear God and know
that unto Him ye shall be gathered.... They who shall disbelieve and
obstruct the way of God, and hinder men from visiting the Holy Temple
of Mecca, which we have appointed for a place of worship unto all men:
the inhabitant thereof and the stranger have an equal right to visit
it: and whosoever shall seek impiously to profane it, we will cause
him to taste a grievous torment. And proclaim unto the people a solemn
Pilgrimage; let them come unto thee on foot, and on every lean camel,
arriving from every distant road, that they may be witnesses of the
advantages which accrue to them from visiting this holy place, and may
commemorate the name of God on the appointed days [namely, the first
ten days of Zú-’l-hijjah, or the tenth day of the same month, on which
they slay the sacrifices, and the three following days] in gratitude
for the brute cattle which he hath bestowed on them. Wherefore eat
thereof, and feed the needy and the poor. Afterwards let them put an
end to the neglect of their persons [by shaving their heads, and the
body from below the neck, and cutting their beards and nails in the
valley of Mina, which the pilgrims are not allowed to do from the time
they become Muhrims, and have solemnly dedicated themselves to the
performance of the Pilgrimage, till they have finished the ceremonies,
and slain their victims]; and let them pay their vows [by doing the
good works which they have vowed to do in their Pilgrimage], and
compass the ancient house [_i.e._, the Ka’bah, which the Muhammadans
pretend was the first edifice built and appointed for the worship of
God]. This let them do. And whoever shall regard the sacred ordinances
of God: this will be better for him in the sight of his Lord. All
sorts of cattle are allowed you to eat, except what hath been read
unto you, in former passages of the Kurán, to be forbidden. But depart
from the abomination of idols, and avoid speaking that which is false:
being orthodox in respect to God, associating no other god with him;
for whosoever associateth any other with God is like that which falleth
from heaven, and which the birds snatch away, or the wind bloweth to a
far distant place. This is so....”
One of the benefits of this Pilgrimage, and, perhaps, the greatest of
all, if we regard the sacrament either from the political and social
or from the religious standpoint, was, and is, the gathering together
in Mecca of Muhammadans of every race and of every sect. There, and in
the city of Medina, they first saw the dawn of their religious faith
and their political power; there their hearts were drawn together
in unity and strength; and there, in the early days of the Caliphs,
they discussed their latest achievements, the glory of their future
conquests, and studied the wants and needs of their co-religionists.
Within the walls of the Holy of Holies they wept and prayed that God
might renew within them a cleaner spirit through faith; and there,
too, they strove with all earnestness to raise themselves to the full
height of the Prophet’s conception of manhood, which encouraged such
virtues as hospitality, generosity, compassion, heroism, courage,
parental love, filial respect, and passive obedience to the will of
God. Thus Mecca, in the days of Pilgrimage, might be looked upon as an
immense club or a university where Muhammadans, from every quarter of
the globe, meet and discuss their political and social problems, and
prostrate themselves in prayer to the one and only Divinity.
Another effect of this Pilgrimage--an effect which has grown less
marked with the increased facility and comfort of travelling--is that
it kindled energy and courage in such people as would never have left
the safe seclusion of their harems had it not been for the rewards
which the undertaking is said to gain for them hereafter. For the
Oriental nations, be it remembered, are not as a rule of a roving
spirit; they are far more inclined by nature to a life of ease and
security than to one of danger and privation. “Travel,” says an Arab
proverb, “is a portion of hell-fire,” and so, perhaps, nothing save the
hope of paradise or the dread of perdition would ever have induced the
meditative Oriental to brave the trials and the hardships of the long
road to Mecca.
In our hearts we believe the proof of the Divine Spirit using any
religion is that it does not deteriorate. The chief objection to
Welsh Calvinism, which, like Muhammadanism, is based on the theory
of Predestination, is that it grows worse. It was once simply
and sincerely religious: it is now mainly political spite. Has
Muhammadanism deteriorated beyond recognition--say, in the eyes of the
student of the Kurán, or does it still hold tight by “the cord of God”?
Do the Sunnís hold themselves aloof from the Shi’ahs, or do they dwell
together, within the Holy Temple, in brotherly love and concord? Their
daily salutation of “Salám,” is it sunk to a mere empty form, or is
it still the expression, as it once undoubtedly was, of a hearty wish
to bring about the Prophet’s single aim? And of all the nationalities
congregated yearly in the city of concourse--the Arabians, the
Persians, the Afghans, the Egyptians, the Muhammadans of India and
China--which among them all is the most worthy to be commended for
its enlightenment and progress? All these questions, and many more
on the social and religious life of the East, will be answered in
the course of the second and third parts of this volume. And in the
meanwhile, I cannot do better than gather into focus the preliminary
notes of my literary partner, beginning with the customs incidental
to the pilgrimage; for the main thing now is to leave nothing unsaid
which would enable the reader to enter into the spirit and the form of
the sacred journey. And henceforward, though I shall always express
myself in my own words, the personal pronoun, whenever used, will
apply, throughout this work, to my collaborator, Hadji Khan, with the
exception of the contents of the Appendix.
II.--CONDITIONS OF PILGRIMAGE.
That being understood, the conditions must be mentioned which, in
theory, though not necessarily in practice, limit the number of
Muhammadans that go on the pilgrimage. First, the Muhammadan must
be of age--that is, he must have completed his fifteenth year when,
according to the Muhammadan Law, a boy becomes a man. Secondly, he
must be of a sound constitution in order to endure the fatigue of the
journey. Thirdly, he should have no debts whatever, but should be
sufficiently well-to-do to defray his own travelling expenses, after
having distributed one-fifth of his property among the Seyyids, given
one-tenth of the remainder in alms, and made provision during his
absence for the support of the family and the servants he leaves behind
him. Fourthly, he should support both the mosque in which he prays
and the fund of the saint he adores the most by making his religious
adviser a present in proportion to his means. Fifthly, he must be
either a virtuous or a sincerely penitent man, for he cannot legally
undertake the pilgrimage unless his wealth has been gained in a lawful
manner. Strictly speaking, a thief, for example, cannot be a pilgrim,
nor can the money earned by accepting bribes be used to cover the
expenses of the journey. The best money to use for the purpose is that
which has been gained from the produce of the soil, or else that which
has been bequeathed by a virtuous father. Sixthly, the Muhammadan who
would be a Hájí must start with an absolutely clean conscience: he must
look to it that the friends he leaves behind him shall have no just
cause to be offended with him. Though he need not heed the slander of
the malignant, he must formally repent of his sins, bidding his friends
and acquaintances good-bye with the words, “Halálám kuníd.” Seventhly,
a woman should be accompanied by one of her Meharem, that is by one of
the men who are privileged to see her unveiled--namely, by her father,
her husband, her brother, her uncle, her born slave, or her eunuch.
In short, the pilgrims should be really good Muslims, adhering firmly
to all the laws laid down in the Kurán, and following religiously the
special teaching of their chosen directors, whose prescriptive right to
regulate the minor details of the rites and observances of the Faith,
has resulted in their wielding a tremendous power over their flocks
even in political matters.
III.--FORBIDDEN VIANDS.
From the little that has been said of the influence of the Persian
clergy you will understand that the priests require their pilgrims
to adhere strictly to the letter of the laws appertaining to the
prohibition and recommendation of certain articles of food. They must
reckon as prohibited and, therefore, impure, twelve things, among
which may be counted pork, underdone meat, the blood of animals, and
wines. Though a digression, it will not be out of place to mention here
that the wine, of which Omar Khayyám and the Súfís in general sing,
is more likely to be the juice of the grape than the interpretation
put on it by such commentators as see in it a symbol of God’s love.
For the effect produced on the brain by the forbidden drink is in
itself something of a mystery, as it were, a divine afflatus, more
particularly is it so considered by a people of such a temperate habit
as the Persians. Some of the higher classes, no doubt, drink hard,
and even drink to get drunk, but upon the whole the Muhammadans, and
especially the Persians, are, in comparison with the majority of
European peoples, extremely sober, bearing their griefs without seeking
the consolation of the bottle.
IV.--THE WORK OF PURIFICATION.
Now, purifications must be made either in flowing water, or in about
half a ton of stagnant pure water. When the nose bleeds it must be
dipped three times, after being well washed. Strange to say, the sweat
of the camel--the animal that bears the pilgrim to Mecca--is said to
be unclean to the touch and its pollution must, like the handling of
dogs, pigs, and rats, be cleansed away by the customary purifications.
Ablutions, called _wuzú’h_ should precede every prayer that is _farz_
or incumbent, and _wuzú’h_ consists first in washing the hands three
times by pouring water from the right hand over the left hand and
rubbing them together, next in washing the face three times with the
right hand, then in pouring the water with the right hand over the
left elbow and rubbing down the forearm, and last of all in repeating
the process with the left hand over the right forearm. After this
_maseh_ must be performed by dipping the right hand in water and
rubbing it over the front portion of the head, and also by rubbing over
the right foot with the wet right hand, and the left foot with the wet
left hand. If the hands or the feet be sore or wounded then clay takes
the place of water, and this particular kind of purification is called
_tyammom_. The devout before reading the Kurán, or before entering the
shrine of a saint or the court of a mosque, should perform _wuzú’h_ or
_tyammom_, and in doing so they should resolve within themselves to
recite such and such a prayer. This is called _Niyyat_, or Declaration
of Intention.
According to a Shi’ah traditionalist, Imám Huseyn has laid down twelve
rules to be observed at meal times. The first four are essential to the
salvation of all true Muslims. They should remember to say “Bismillah”
before tasting each dish, and refrain from eating of the forbidden
viands; they should also assure themselves that the food laid before
them has been bought with money obtained from a legal source, and
should end by returning thanks to God. The second four, though not
universally obeyed, are admitted by all to be “good form,” and consist
in washing the hands before meat, in sitting down inclined to the left,
in eating with the thumb and the first two fingers of the right hand,
which hand must be kept especially clean for the purpose. The last
four rules deal with matters of social etiquette. They are kept by
most Muhammadans in polite society, and are as follows: One should not
stretch across the tablecloth, but should partake only of such dishes
as are within one’s reach; one should not stuff the mouth too full, nor
forget to masticate the food thoroughly; and one should keep the eyes
downcast and the tongue as silent as possible.
It is a tradition that the washing of hands before meals will
materially help the true Muslim to grow rich, and be the means of
delivering him from all diseases. If he rub his eyes immediately after
the ablution they will never be sore. The left hand must not be used in
eating unless the right be disabled.
All true Muslims when eating are advised to begin with salt and finish
with vinegar. If they begin with salt they will escape the contagion of
seventy diseases. If they finish with vinegar their worldly prosperity
will continue to increase. The host is in etiquette bound to be the
first to start eating and the last to leave off. Tooth-picking is
considered an act of grace, for Gabriel is reported to have brought a
tooth-pick from heaven for the use of the Prophet after every meal. The
priests recite certain passages of the Kurán before and after lunch and
dinner, and also before drinking water at any hour of the day.
V.--PRAYERS.
All Muslims must say five prayers every day, and the following six
things should be observed before the prayers are acceptable to God:
(1) _wuzú’h_ or _tyammom_, (2) putting off dirty clothes, (3) covering
one’s body and head and doffing the shoes, (4) keeping the appointed
time, (5) determining the exact position of Mecca, and (6) assuring
one’s self as to the purity of the place in which the prayers are said.
Before beginning one must say within one’s self what prayers one is
about to recite, and for what purpose one is going to recite them, and
at the end one must raise the hands to Heaven, saying, “May peace
be with Muhammad and with his disciples.” For prayer was by Muhammad
deemed so urgent an act of reverence that he used to call it the pillar
of religion and the key of paradise, declaring “that there could be no
good in that religion wherein was no prayer.” It behoves every pilgrim,
therefore, in his sacred habit, to pray at least five times every
twenty-four hours; (1) in the morning before sunrise, (2) when noon
is past and the sun begins to decline from the meridian, (3) in the
afternoon before sunset, (4) in the evening after sunset and before day
be shut in, and (5) after the day is shut in and before the first watch
of the night. Besides these, there are certain other prayers which,
though not expressly enjoined, are commended as a special act of grace,
more particularly perhaps to the pilgrims in ihrám. Among these may be
mentioned the separate prayers generally said at night (_i.e._, the
namáz-i-tahajjud and the vitr), and the extra prayers not prescribed
by law, the naváfil and the namáz-i-mustahabb. The positions of the
body are as follows: (1) kiyám, that is, standing erect, with the hands
down by the sides; (2) takbírguftán, declaring God’s greatness, on
raising the hands on either side of the face, with the thumbs under
the lobes of the ears, and the fingers extended; (3) rukú, inclining
the body from the waist and placing the hands on the knees; (4) kunút,
standing with the head inclined forward and the hands on either side of
the face; (5) dú zánúnishastán, kneeling, the hands lying flat on the
thighs; and (6) sijdah, prostration, in which the forehead must touch
the ground, or the lump of unbaked clay that is known by the name of
“mohre.” A full prayer is made up of five “rakats” or prostrations,
during which not a word save the prayer as prescribed should be
uttered. Part of the prayer is said aloud and part in a whispering
tone. The greatest care should be taken to pronounce each word with
the correct Arabic accent, since ill-pronounced words, unless the
result of a natural defect, are said to be unacceptable to the Creator.
The pilgrim should say special prayers on Friday, and every time he
has recourse to the Kurán before deciding on any course of action
whatsoever. A special prayer is said by the devout about one hour after
midnight. This is called the midnight prayer, and is, of course, a
tedious task. Hence it is sometimes said sarcastically of a man with a
loose belief in the Faith: “He says midnight prayers!” The prayers most
readily answered are the prayers said in Mecca. Thus when a pilgrim
sets out on his journey he is requested by his friends to pray for them
at the House of God. The name of the person for whom one prays should
be uttered, otherwise the prayer will have no effect. Every pilgrim
must take with him a rosary, the square piece of unbaked clay called
“mohre,” and a copy of the Kurán, for a passage of the Kurán must be
read after every prayer.
VI.--ASPECTS OF SOCIAL ISLÁM.
It is now time to give the reader, in as terse and as condensed a
form as possible, a general idea of the part played by religion in
the workaday lives of the children of the Faith, beginning with their
toilet, that is, with their dressing and bathing, with the combing of
their hair and the cutting of their nails.
A pious Persian Muslim, before wearing any new article of clothing,
performs his ablutions and prostrates himself twice in prayer. A man
of a less devout, but a more superstitious, trend of mind contents
himself with consulting the _taghvím_ or the _estakhhareh_[1] muttering
to himself, ere he dons the garment, “In the name of God the Merciful
and Clement!” His friends on seeing the new apparel cry out, “May it be
auspicious!” The rewards of a man who says his prayers before putting
on a new suit of clothes will be in proportion to the number of threads
in the cloth. Hence it has come to be a practice to preserve the
material from the blight of the Evil Eye by besprinkling it with pure
water over which a prescribed passage of the Kurán has been read.
[1] For fuller particulars of the _taghvím_ and the _estakhhareh_, see
page 289 “Healing by Faith.”
It is unlucky for a Muslim to sit down before taking off his shoes.
When drawing them on it is equally unlucky for him to stand up. The
custom, in the first instance, is to rise, doffing first the left
shoe and then the right one. The procedure must be reversed in every
particular when putting them on. The universal belief in omens is
traditional, and extends, among other things, to precious stones. By
far the luckiest of these is the flesh-coloured cornelian, which is
a great favourite with the men. It owes its popularity to the fact
that the Prophet himself is said to have worn a cornelian ring set in
silver on the little finger of his right hand. It grew still more in
favour at a later period, because Jafar, the famous Imám, declared
that the desires of every man who wore it would be gratified. And
thenceforward its property to bless has been regarded as axiomatic by
the superstitious to whom I am referring.
[Illustration: COPIES OF THE KURÁN WORN _EN BANDOULIÈRE_ BY MUSLIMS
WHEN TRAVELLING OR ON PILGRIMAGE.]
The Shiahs have the name of one of the twelve Imáms engraved on the
stone; others make use of it as a seal bearing their own names. Hardly
less lucky are the turquoise and the ruby, which are believed to have
the effect of warding off poverty from those who are fortunate
enough to possess them. This is why they are treasured by the fair sex,
the ruby being, perhaps, the more dearly loved of the two.
Every bath has generally three courts. On entering each one of these
the devout say the prayers prescribed for the occasion, but the
generality of Muslims, unless they intend to perform the religious
purifications, consider it sufficient to greet the people who are
present with the word “Salám!” It is considered inauspicious to brush
the teeth in the baths, but certain portions of hair must be removed by
a composition of quicklime and arsenic, called nureh, and the nureh,
though efficacious enough, no matter when it may be used, is said to
add immeasurably to a man’s chance of salvation by being laid on either
on a Wednesday or on a Friday.
The application of the juice of the marsh-mallow as an emollient
for the hair is strongly recommended by the saints. Their object in
bequeathing this advice to the consideration of their flock was not to
inculcate vanity. They had a higher aim than that. Their desire was to
stave off starvation from the fold, for that, in their opinion, would
be the result of using the lotion on an ordinary day of the week; while
rubbing the head vigorously with the precious juice on the Muslim
Sabbath would be certain to preserve the skin from leprosy and the mind
from madness. To the use of a decoction of the leaves of the lote-tree
a divine relief is attributed, for the mere smell of it on the hair of
the most unregenerate has on Satan an effect so disheartening that he
will cease from leading them into temptation for no less than seventy
days.
The pressure of the grave will be mitigated by a skilful and untiring
application of the comb in this life. The blessing of the comb is
said to have been revealed to Imám Jafar. Women are not excluded from
the spiritual benefits derived from the comb. But, remember, the hair
must not be done in a frivolous, much less in a perfunctory fashion.
Far from it. On no account whatever must the hair be neglected, for
Satan is attracted by dishevelled locks. They are, as it were, a net in
which he catches the human soul. Therefore, since the priests and the
merchants of Islám shave their heads in most parts of the Muslim world,
special attention should be paid by them to their beards and eyebrows.
A pocket-comb made of sandal-wood is often carried by the true
Believers, who, it may be hoped, turn it to good account in moments of
spiritual unwillingness on the part of the natural man.
A Mullá’s beard is an object of veneration to his flock. He may trim
it lest it should grow as wild as a Jew’s, but he is forbidden by
tradition to shave it. Even the scissors must be plied sparingly and to
the accompaniment of prayer. Perhaps the orthodox length of this almost
divine appendage of the true Muslim is the length of the wearer’s hand
from the point of the chin downwards. This is known as a ghabzeh or
handful. A priest may be allowed to add the length of the first joint
of his little finger, otherwise his power to awe might grow lax. The
soul is in danger every time he forgets to cut his sharib, that is, the
tip of his moustache, which should be reduced to bristles once a week.
Once on a time a faithful follower of the Prophet asked one of the
Imáms what he should do to increase his livelihood. The Imám answered
unhesitatingly: “Cut your nails and your sharib on a Friday as long as
you live!”
Again, according to a Shi’ah traditionist, if a Muslim gaze into
a looking-glass, before saying his prayers, he will be guilty of
worshipping his own likeness, however unsightly it may appear in his
eyes. The hand must be drawn across the forehead, ere the hair or the
beard be adjusted, or else the mirror will reflect a mind given over
to vanity, which is a grievous, if universal sin. The new moon must
be seen “on the face” of a friend, on a copy of the Kurán, or on a
turquoise stone. Unless one of these conditions be observed, there is
no telling what evil might not happen.
The devout who are most anxious to vindicate tradition perform two
prostrations on beholding the new moon, and sacrifice a sheep for the
poor as an additional safeguard against her baneful rays. The Evil
Eye more often than not has its seat in the socket of an unbeliever.
Therefore, the Muslim who, on being brought face to face with a
heretic, should not say the prayer by law ordained must look to his
charms or suffer the inevitable blight. A cat may look at a king; a
king may shoot a ferocious animal; and a thief may run away with the
spoil. But a true Believer must guard his faith against aggression
every time he sees a thief, a ferocious animal, or a king. For very
different reasons, he must recite a prescribed formula of prayer
on the passing of a funeral procession, and also on his seeing the
first-fruits of the season and its flowers. The dead, it is said, will
hear his voice if, on crossing a cemetery, he cry aloud: “O ye people
of the grave, may peace be with you, of both sexes of the Faithful!”
As the sense of sight gives rise to devotional exercises, so also does
the sense of hearing. The holy Muslim should lend a prayerful ear to
the cries of the muezzin during the first two sentences of the summons,
and when the call to prayer is over he should rub his eyes with his
fingers, in order to produce the signs of weeping--a mark of contrition
and of emotional recrudescence in the matter of piety. The true
Believer, whenever he hears the Sureh Sújdeh read in the Kurán, should
prostrate himself and repeat the words after the reader. If he hear
a Muslim sneeze he should say, “May peace be with thee!” and if the
sneeze be repeated, “Mayest thou be cured!” But, if a Kafir sneeze, the
response must be expressed in the wish to see him tread “the straight
path.”
Every child of Islám, before going to bed, should perform his ablutions
and say his prayers. If he wish to be delivered from nightmare and
all its terrors let him say to Allah: “I take refuge in Thee from the
evil of Satan,” and if he is afraid of being bitten by a scorpion let
him appeal to Noah, saying, “May peace be with thee, O Noah!” One
day Eshagh-ben-Ammar asked Imám Jafar how he could protect himself
against the attack of that malignant arachnidan. The Imám replied:
“Look at the constellation of the Bear; therein you will find a small
star, the lowest of all, which the Arabs call Sohail. Fix your eyes in
the direction of that star, and say three times, ‘May peace be with
Muhammad and with his people: O Sohail, protect me from scorpions,’ and
you will be protected from them.” Eshagh-ben-Ammar goes on to relate
that he read the formula every evening before going to bed, and that it
proved successful; but one evening he forgot to repeat it, and, as a
consequence, was bitten by a black scorpion.
Prayers are also said against mosquitoes and other insects. This
cleanses the conscience of the irate Muslim, if it fail in preserving
his skin. The Eastern peoples in general and the Muhammadans in
particular are early risers. Sleep after morning prayers, which are
said before sunrise, is sure to cause folly; sleep in the middle of
the day is believed to be necessary and suitable to work; while sleep
before evening prayers has precisely the same effect as after the
devotions of the early morning. A traditionist says that the prophets
slept on their backs, so as to be able to converse with the angels at
any hour of the night; that the faithful must sleep on their right
sides, and the Kafirs on their left; and that the deves take their rest
on their stomachs.
Usury, though interest on money was strictly prohibited by the Prophet,
is among the Muslims of the present day a common practice. They evade
the letter of the law by putting what the Persians call “a legal cap
over the head” of the usurious transaction. The money-lender picks up
a handful of barley and says to the borrower, “Give me the rate of
interest as the cost of this grain, which I now offer to sell to you
at that price;” and the borrower replies that he accepts the bargain.
Also, a merchant must know all the laws appertaining to buying and
selling. Imám ’Ali is said to have made a daily round of the bazaars of
Kufa crying out the while, “O ye merchants and traders, deal honestly
and in accordance with the laws of your Prophet. Swear not, neither
tell lies, and cheat not your customers. Beware of using false weights,
and walk ye in the paths of righteousness.”
A high priest in Mecca assured me that to enjoy a derham of interest is
as bad as taking the blood of seventy virgins. The admonitions of ’Alí
the Just, though sometimes read, are less often followed. On leaving
his house a merchant must say “Bismillah,” and then blow to his left
and his right and also in front of him, so as to clear the way to good
business.
The pious recite, on entering the bazaar, a prayer ordained for the
occasion. When the bargain is clinched the seller should cry out, “God
is great! God is great!” But there should be no dishonest bargaining
over the purchasing of these four things: the winding sheets for the
dead, the commodities to be distributed in charity, the expenses on
the journey to Mecca, and the price of a slave’s ransom. In all these
transactions the buyer and seller must act according to the dictates of
fair play. The man who buys a slave should lay hold of him by a hair of
his head and say the prescribed prayer; after which, if guided by Imám
Jafar, he must change the name of his purchase. Slaves are treated with
every consideration, so much so indeed that in the household of Eastern
potentates, whose treatment of their dependents is extremely arbitrary,
the slaves lord it over the servants.
It is said, in the traditions, that a true Muslim should marry
neither for money nor for beauty, but should be guided by the woman’s
moral worth and spiritual endowments. His choice is referred to the
arbitrament of the _estakhhareh_. “A chaste maiden will make a good
wife; for she will be sweet-tempered to her husband, and mild but
firm in the treatment of her children.” This saying is attributed to
the Prophet. “A bad wife, a wicked animal, and a narrow house with
unsociable neighbours, those are the possessions which try a man’s
temper,” cried one of the Imáms, himself a saintly man. “The best woman
is she who bears children frequently, who is beloved by her relatives,
who shows herself obedient to her husband, who pleases him by wearing
her best clothes, and who avoids the eyes of men who cannot lawfully
see her.” These words were uttered by Muhammad, if we are to believe
tradition.
The wedding must not take place when the moon is under an eclipse, nor
when she is in the sign of Scorpio. The best time is between the 26th
and the end of the lunar month. Muhammad recommended festivals to be
celebrated on five occasions: on wedding and nuptial days, on the birth
of a child, on the circumcision of a child, on taking up one’s abode
in a newly-purchased house, and on returning from Mecca. Only persons
of unblemished reputation should be invited to the marriage or the
nuptial feasts.
To the man who brings him news of the birth of a male child the father
should give a present. The nurse should lose no time in singing the
first chapter of the prescribed prayer in the baby’s right ear, and
what is called the standing prayer in its left one, and if the water
of the Euphrates be procurable it should be sprinkled on the baby’s
forehead.
On the seventh day after the child’s birth the ceremony of the Aghigheh
is performed in Persia. This consists in killing a fatted sheep, in
cooking it, and in distributing the flesh among the neighbours or among
the poor who come to the door. In memory of the occasion a cornelian
engraved with a Kurán text, and sometimes surrounded with precious
stones, as in the cover-design to the present volume, is fastened to
the baby’s arm by means of a silk band, and is worn perhaps to the end
of its life. Not a single bone of the Aghigheh sheep should be broken;
certain prayers should be read before the sheep is killed; and the
parents should not take part in the feast.
The baby is not often weaned until it is two years old, Muhammad
believing that the mother’s milk is the best and acts beneficially on
the child’s future character and temperament.
VII.--STORY OF THE MUSLIM MOONS.
The twelve Muhammadan months are lunar, and number twenty-nine and
thirty days alternately. Thus the whole year contains only three
hundred and fifty-four days; but eleven times in the course of thirty
years an intercalary day is added. Accordingly, thirty-two of our
years are, roughly speaking, equal to thirty-three Muhammadan years.
The Muhammadan Era dates from the morning after the Hegira, or the
flight of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina, that is, on the 16th of
July, A.D. 622. Every year begins earlier than the preceding one, so
that a month beginning in summer in the present year will, sixteen
years hence, fall in winter. The following are the names of the months,
which do not correspond in any way with ours: 1, Muharram; 2, Safar; 3,
Rabíu-’l-avval; 4, Rabíu-’s-sání or Rabíu-’l-ákhir; 5, Jumádáu-’l-úlá;
6, Jumádáu-’s-sání or Jumádáu-’l-ákhir; 7, Rajab; 8, Sha’bán; 9,
Ramazán; 10, Shavvál; 11, Zú-’l-ka’dah, or Zí-ka’d; 12, Zú-’l-hijjah,
or Zí-hajj. Many stories of these months were told to me by the priests
and the pilgrims whom I met at Mecca, and it is therefore my intention
to tell over again the stories of the most cherished months of the
Muslim year. These are Rajab, Sha’bán, Ramazán, Shavvál, Zú-’l-ka’dah,
Zú-’l-hijjah, and Muharram.
On the Day of Judgment, the Holy Muezzin, sitting on the Throne, will
cry out, ere he pass judgment on the Faithful, saying: “O moons of
Rajab, Sha’bán, and Ramazán, how stands it with the deeds of this
humble slave of ours?” The three moons will then prostrate themselves
before the Throne, and answer: “O Lord, we bear witness to the good
deeds of this humble slave. When he was with us he kept on loading his
caravans with provisions for the next world, beseeching Thee to grant
him Thy divine favour, and expressing his perfect contentment with the
fate that Thou hadst sent unto him.” After them their guardian-angels,
meekly kneeling on their knees, will raise their voices in praise of
the pious Muslim, crying: “O Lord God Almighty, we also bear witness
to the good deeds of this humble slave of Thine. On earth his eyes,
his ears, his nose, his mouth, and his stomach were all obedient both
to whatsoever Thou hast forbidden and also to whatsoever Thou hast made
lawful. The days he passed in fasting, and the nights in sleepless
supplication. Verily he is a good doer!” Then Allah will command his
slave to be borne into Paradise on a steed of light, accompanied by
angels, and by all the rewards of his piety on camels of light, and
there he will be conducted to a palace whose foundation is laid in
everlasting felicity, and whose inmates never grow old. The moon of
Rajab is the month of Allah. It is said that there is a stream of that
name in Paradise, whose water is white, and more wholesome than milk
and sweeter than honey. The first to welcome the new arrival will be
this stream, which will straightway wend its course round his palace.
To Salim, one of his disciples, Muhammad is reported to have said: “If
you keep fast for one day during the month of Rajab you will be free
from the terror of death, and the agony of death, from the percussion
of the grave, and the loneliness thereof. If you keep fast for two days
the eight doors of Paradise will be opened unto you.”
The authoritative tradition goes that a crier will make himself heard
from between the earth and the sky, summoning the pious who observed
the prayers and the privations of the moon of Rajab: “Oh, ye Rajabians,
come forth and present yourselves before your Creator.” Then the
Rajabians, whose heads will be crowned with pearls and rubies, and
whose faces will be bathed in the universal light, will arise and stand
before the Throne. And each one among them will have a thousand angels
on his right hand and a thousand on his left, and they will shout with
one accord, saying: “O, ye Rajabians, may ye be deserving of all the
holy favours ye are about to receive!” And last of all, Allah, in his
mercy, will say to them: “O my male and female slaves, I swear by my
own magnanimity, that I will give you lodgings in the most delightful
nooks of my Paradise, namely, in the palaces around which flow the most
refreshing streams of purest water.”
A baby is to the Muslim a symbol of purity: and so a man who worships
God in the month of Rajab will become like unto a new-born child,
always provided that he repent of the sins which he has committed, and
follow the law of the Prophet. Not until then will the pious Rajabian
be in a fit state, in his character of new-born babe, to start life
afresh. The Muhammadans, in so far as duty and obedience are concerned,
put on pretty much the same footing the relation of the slave to his
master, of the wife to her husband, of the child to its parent, and of
the guest to his host. The parallel between the last-mentioned and the
preceding is complete because the guest must acquiesce in his host’s
will, which is supreme. In the matter of repentance, that of Nessouh is
exemplary among the Muhammadans.
Now, this man Nessouh was in his face and his voice so like a woman
that his wicked nature persuaded him to wear skirts that he might
add to his experience of the opposite sex by mixing freely among
its members. Soon, his curiosity growing in ratio with his acquired
knowledge, we hear of him as an attendant in the hammam of the royal
seraglio, where he might have pursued his studies in peace and in
rapture had not one of the Royal Princesses, who had lost a ring, cast
suspicion on every servant in turn. The seed of Nessouh’s repentance
was sown when the decree went out that all the attendants of the baths
were to be searched. The fear lest his sex should be discovered yielded
so swiftly to repentance for having veiled it, that Almighty Allah
despatched an angel from Paradise to discover the missing treasure
before the decree took effect; and thenceforward Nessouh, out of
the gratitude of his heart, renounced his studies of human nature in
petticoats, and vied with the most rigid disciplinarians in prayer and
in fasting. His virtues grew so conspicuous in male attire that his
repentance has come to be accepted as worthy of imitation by every true
Believer.
According to tradition it was on the first day of God’s moon that
Noah, having taken his seat in the Ark, commanded all the men and
jinns and beasts that were with him to keep fast from sunrise to
sunset. On the evening of the same day, when the sun was going down,
the Ark, riding over the flood, would have heeled over had not Allah
sent seventy thousand of his angels to the rescue. It is interesting
to note that the number of all the traditional rewards of virtue, as
well as that of such of the heavenly hosts as lend their assistance in
cases of distress, is always a multiple of seven. A Meccan priest added
the following to my collection of “rewards”: God will build seventy
thousand cities in Paradise, each city containing seventy thousand
mansions, each mansion seventy thousand houris, each houri surrounded
by seventy thousand beautiful serving women, for the pilgrim--mark
this--who shall say his prayers with the best accent on the Hájj
Day. The Mullá in question was himself a perfect Arabic scholar; his
enunciation in reciting the forthcoming bliss was faultlessly correct;
each syllable seemed to pay his lips the tribute of a kiss for the
pleasure it had derived from listening to the mellifluous sound of its
predecessors. This learned priest will be in his element on all scores
should the Paradise of his invention be materialised.
As Rajab belongs to Allah so Sha’bán is held sacred to the Prophet.
For we read in the history of Islám that Muhammad, who entered Medina
on the first day of the gracious moon, commanded the muezzins to make
it known to his people that the good actions which they might perform
during the month would help both himself and them to gain salvation;
whereas their evil actions would be committed against his apostleship,
and would on that account be the more severely punished hereafter.
Once a year, on the approach of Ramazán, the precincts of Paradise, and
all its gardens and palaces, are illuminated, festooned, and decorated,
and a most tuneful wind, known in Arabic by the name of Meshireh,
makes music in the trees. Now, no sooner do the houris hear this sound
than they rush out from their seclusion, and cry aloud: “Is there any
one to marry us through the desire to perform a good deed towards the
creatures of God?” Then, turning to Rezvan, the guardian of Paradise,
“What night is this?” they ask; and Rezvan answers, “O ye fair-faced
houris, this is the eve of the holy moon of Ramazán. The gates of
Paradise have I ordered to be opened unto the fast-keepers of the Faith
of the Faithful.” Then Allah, addressing the angel who has the charge
of Hell, says to him: “O Málik, I bid thee to close thy gates against
the fast-keepers of the faith of my Apostle.” And next, summoning the
Archangel of Revelations, He gives command, saying: “O Gabriel, go
forth in the earth and put Satan in chains, and all his followers,
that the path of my chosen people may be safe.” So, on the first day
of Ramazán, Gabriel swoops down on the earth accompanied by hosts of
angels. He has six hundred wings, and opens all of them except two. In
his hands he bears four green banners, emblems of the Muslim creed.
These he plants on the summit of Mount Sinai, and on the Prophet’s tomb
at Medina, and in the Harem of Mecca. His army of angels bivouacs on
the plains round about the Holy City and on the surrounding mountains.
On the eve of the day of reward, which is called Ghadre, the angels
are ordered to disperse throughout the Muslim world, and every true
Believer seen praying during that night is embraced by one of them,
and his prayer meets with an angelic Amen. At the dawn of Ghadre day
a heavenly bugle recalls the angels to Mecca. When Gabriel returns to
Heaven it is to say to Allah, “My Lord, all the true Believers have I
forgiven in Thy name save those who have been constant wine-bibbers, or
incurred the displeasure of their parents, or indulged in abusing their
fellow Muslims.”
The various sects of the Muhammadans disagree a good deal as to the
date of Ghadre day. Some say it is on the 19th, some on the 21st, and
others on the 23rd of the Muslim Lent; but all agree in believing it to
be the day on which the books of deeds, good and evil, are balanced,
and on which the angels make known to Muhammad the predestination of
his followers for whom he intercedes. All Shi’ahs who would win a
reputation for piety must keep Ahia, that is, pass the three nights
above-mentioned in fasting and holy devotions--a penance of untold
severity in that every day of the month must be similarly spent from
sunrise to sundown. Through most ardent prayers on the 21st of Ramazán
the devout Mussulman may win the privilege of becoming a Hájí in the
following year. The 7th is the anniversary of Muhammad’s victory
over the Kuraish in the battle of Badre, and is a great day with
all Islamites. For the rest, the Arabs follow the example of their
Prophet in breaking their fast on dates and water; special angels
are appointed to plant heavenly trees, and to build divine palaces
in readiness for such of the Muslims as should neither neglect their
religious purifications nor forget to behave themselves as “Allah’s
guests.” Many Muslims, unquestionably, adhere strictly to all the rites
and observances of the occasion; not a few, on the other hand, though
they may fast during the day, devote the night to feasting. Indeed, in
every capital of Islám, in Teheran, in Constantinople, and in Cairo,
the darkling hours are given up by certain people to amusements and
sometimes to vicious pursuits.
The heavenly hosts under the Archangel Gabriel, with his five hundred
and ninety-eight wings wide open, and his green banner flying over the
gate of the Ka’bah,--the heavenly hosts, I say, dispersing through the
Muslim world on the eve of Ghadre will prevail on the ghosts of the one
hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets to kiss the Muslims that are
piously engaged at night, delivering them from the danger of drowning,
of being buried under ruins, of choking at meal times, and of being
killed by wild beasts. For them the grave will have no terror, and on
leaving it a substantial cheque on the keeper of Paradise, crossed and
made payable to bearer, will be placed in the hands of each one of them.
On the first day of the moon of Shavvál, the fast of Ramazán being
over, all true Muslims are supposed to give away in charity a measure
of wheat, barley, dates, raisins, or other provisions in common use.
The guests who stay over the preceding night are entitled to receive
a portion of the alms distributed by the master of the house next
morning; and hence only the poor and needy are invited to accept
hospitality on the occasion of the Zikat-é-Fetre--that is, the festival
of alms-giving. The fulfilment of the law is believed not only to
produce an increase of wealth in the forthcoming year, but also to
cleanse the body of all impurities. So much for the rewards as a
stimulus to honesty. Now for the penalty as a deterrent from greed.
In the third Súra of the Kurán it is written: “But let not those who
are covetous of what God of His bounty hath granted them imagine that
their avarice is better for them; nay, rather it is worse for them. For
that which they have covetously reserved shall be bound as a collar
about their necks on the day of the resurrection: and God is well
acquainted with what ye do.” Shiahs are reluctant to get married in the
interval between the first of Shavvál and the tenth of Zú-’l-hijjah,
because the Prophet is said to have married Aishah, the enemy of ’Alí,
about that time. On the other hand the Sunnis, who reverence that
brilliant woman, commemorate her wedding day by solemnising their own
during this season, unless they are performing the pilgrimage of Mecca.
The most sacred day of the following month--the moon of
Zú-’l-ka’dah--is the twenty-fifth. On that day Adam was created;
Abraham, Ishmael, and Jesus were born, and the Shiah Messiah, the
concealed Imám, will come again to judge the world. A Muslim, if he
keep fast on the twenty-fifth of Zú-’l-ka’dah, will earn the rewards
of a man to whom Allah in his mercy should grant the privilege and the
power of praying for nine hundred years. On the first of Zú-’l-hijjah,
which is the month of pilgrimage, Abraham received from God the title
of Al-Khalíl, or the Friend of Allah. It is accounted a good deed
to fast from the first to the tenth day of this the last journeying
month; it is also wise to do so, for it is not every month in the
year that the Mussulman can win, by nine days of fasting, the fruits
of a whole lifetime of self-denial. Another tradition deserving of
mention in connection with this month is that Jesus, in the company
of Gabriel, was sent to earth by God with five prayers, which he was
commanded to repeat on the first five days of the pilgrims’ moon; but
the two holiest days of the moon of Zú-’l-hijjah are the ninth and
the tenth. On the ninth, after morning prayer, the pilgrims, in olden
times, departed from the Valley of Mina, whither they had come on the
previous day, and rushed in a headlong manner to Mount Arafat, where a
sermon is preached, and where they performed the devotions entitling
them to be called Hájís. But nowadays they pass through Mina to Mount
Arafat without stopping on the outward journey; and at sunset, after
the sermon is over, they betake themselves to Muzdalifah, an oratory
between Arafat and Mina, and there the hours of the night are spent in
prayer and in reading the Kurán.
On the tenth, by daybreak, the holy monument, or _al Masher al harám_,
is visited, after which the pilgrims hasten back, on the rising of the
sun, to the Valley of Mina, where, on the 10th and the two following
days, the stoning of the Devil takes place, every pilgrim casting a
certain number of stones at three pillars. This rite is as old as
Abraham, who, being interrupted by Satan when he was about to sacrifice
his son Ishmael, was commanded by God to put the tempter to flight
by throwing stones at him. Next, still on the same day, the tenth of
Zú-’l-hijjah, and in the same place, the Valley of Mina, the pilgrims
slay their victims, and when the sacrifice is over they shave their
heads and trim their nails, and then return to Mecca in order to take
their leave of the Ka’bah. All these ceremonies will be described in
detail in the forthcoming narrative. Meanwhile, by way of further
introduction, a few words must be said as to the animals sacrificed.
The victims should be camels, kine, sheep, or goats. The camels and
kine should be females and the sheep and goats males. In age the camels
should be five years and not less; the cows and goats in their second
year; and the sheep not younger than six months. All should be without
blemish, neither blind nor lame: their ears should not have been cut,
nor their horns have been broken. The males should be complete, and all
be well fed. They were woefully lean, however, in the year 1319 of the
Flight. The camels are sacrificed while standing, the fore and hind
legs being tied together. A single blow is delivered where the head
joins the neck, the name of God being uttered the while. The victim
must face the Kiblah, and the butcher or the pilgrim, as the case may
be, stands on the right of the animal he is going to slay. If the
pilgrim be too tender-hearted to deal the blow, he should catch hold
of the butcher’s wrist, so as to take part in the act of sacrifice.
All the other victims--namely, the kine, the sheep, and the goats--are
made to lie on their sides facing Mecca, all four legs being securely
fastened, then their throats are cut with a sharp knife, without,
however, severing the head from the body.
The custom of sacrificing a camel on the tenth day of Zú-’l-hijjah
prevails among the Shiahs in most of the towns of Persia and of Central
Asia. The ceremony varies with the locality; but the one we witnessed
was so picturesque that we cannot refrain from describing it. For the
first nine days the camel, richly caparisoned, is led through the
streets of the city; half a dozen Dervishes, intoning passages of
the Kurán, swing along at the head of the procession; at every house
the camel is made to halt, and subscriptions are raised towards its
purchase-money and its maintenance. The victim, goaded on from street
to street and from square to square, ends at last by collecting alms
for its tormentors. On the eve of the Day of Sacrifice the camel is
stripped of its gaudy trappings, and its body is, as it were, mapped
out into portions with red ink, one portion being allotted to every
quarter of the city. The place of sacrifice is usually outside the city
walls, and early in the morning each district arms its strongest men to
go and claim its share of the carcase. Each group may contain as many
as twenty men, bristling from head to foot with uncouth weapons, and a
band of drummers adds to the barbaric display the sounds of discordant
music. One man in each group rides on horseback and wears a cashmere
shawl; it is he who receives into his hands the sacrificial share
of the parish he represents. Prayers are said, and then, at a given
signal, the butcher prepares his knife, and the cutters appointed by
the respective quarters make ready to hack the victim in pieces. The
camel, bare of covering, and marked all over with the red lines, turns
its supercilious eyes on the eager cutters, and they, in their turn,
watch the butcher. The wretched victim may or may not be conscious of
its fate. I believe it to be conscious; but, whether it is or not,
there is no sign of terror in its eyes, only the customary look of sly
disdain. No sooner does the butcher plunge the knife into the camel’s
windpipe than the cutters vie with one another as to who shall be the
first to finish carving the still animate body, each allotted part of
which is handed warm and well-nigh throbbing with life, to the horseman
of the quarter to which it belongs. He takes it in procession to the
house of the magistrate, who distributes it among the poor.
The prayer most acceptable to God is that of Nodbeh, which must be
said by the pilgrims on Mount Arafat, with tears pouring from their
eyes. The Prophet rose to a noble conception of the next life. He not
only believed that the pure-hearted will see God, he also proclaimed
that blessing to be the height of heavenly bliss. The Muslim Paradise,
therefore, in its material aspect unalloyed, is the invention of the
tradition-mongers. According to the orthodox among them, it is situated
above the seven heavens, immediately under the Throne of God. Some say
that the soil of it consists of the finest wheat flour, others will
have it to be of the purest musk, and others again of saffron. Its
palaces have walls of solid gold, its stones are pearls and jacinths,
and of its trees, all of which have golden trunks, the most remarkable
is the Tree of Happiness, Túba, as they call it. This tree, which
stands in the Palace of Muhammad, is laden with fruits of every kind,
with grapes and pomegranates, with oranges and dates, and peaches and
nectarines, which are of a growth and a flavour unknown to mortals. In
response to the desire of the blessed, it will yield, in addition to
the luscious fruit, not only birds ready dressed for the table, but
also flowing garments of silk and of velvet, and gaily caparisoned
steeds to ride on, all of which will burst out from its leaves. There
will be no need to reach out the hand to the branches, for the branches
will bend down of their own accord to the hand of the person who
would gather of their products. So large is the Túba tree that a man
“mounted on the fleetest horse would not be able to gallop from one
end of its shade to the other in a hundred years.” All the rivers of
Paradise take their rise from the root of the Tree of Happiness; some
of them flow with water, some with milk, some with wine, and others
with honey. Their beds are of musk, their sides of saffron, their
earth of camphire, and their pebbles are rubies and emeralds. The most
noteworthy among them, after the River of Life, is Al-Káwthar. This
word, Al-Káwthar, which signifies _abundance_, has come to mean the
gift of prophecy, and the water of the river of that name is derived
into Muhammad’s pond. According to a tradition of the Prophet, this
river, wherein his Lord promised him abundance of wisdom, is whiter
than milk, cooler than snow, sweeter than honey, and smoother than
cream; and those who drink of it shall never be thirsty.
The blessed, having quenched their thirst in Muhammad’s pond, are
admitted into Paradise, and there they are entertained to dinner by the
Supreme Host. For meat they will have the ox Balám and the fish Nún,
and for bread--mark this--God will turn the whole earth into one huge
loaf, and hand it to His guests, “holding it like a cake.” When the
repast is over they will be conducted to the palaces prepared for them,
where they will dwell with the houris they have won by their good deeds
on earth. They will fare sumptuously through all eternity, and without
loss of appetite, eat as much as they will: for all superfluities will
be discharged by sweat as fragrant as musk, so that the last morsel of
food will be as comforting as the first.
The imagination of the tradition-mongers is not less extravagant
when it busies itself with the holy festivals of the faith. The
A’yáde-Shadir, perhaps the most important of these feast-days, falls
on the eighteenth of Zú-’l-hijjah. Books might be written--nay,
tomes innumerable have been filled--to do honour to the attributes
of that day. In fact, Oriental exaggeration in general, and the
Shiah superstition in particular, reach the climax of fancy in the
description of the events that are supposed by the devout Shiah to have
happened on the A’yád of Ghadir. For was it not on the eighteenth of
Zú-’l-hijjah that Muhammad mounted a camel, and, raising ’Alí in his
arms, appointed this chivalrous cousin and son-in-law of his to be his
lawful successor? This righteous act on the part of the Prophet is the
corner-stone of the Shiah faith, and so it is not unnatural, perhaps,
that it should have been made the source of unnumbered traditions. We
read, among other inventions, that it was on that day that God chose
to humiliate Satan by ordering an angel to rub his nose in the dirt;
that the Archangel Gabriel, along with a host of angels, came down
from heaven in the evening, bearing a throne of light, which he placed
opposite to the Ka’bah, and from which he preached to his companions a
stirring sermon in praise of Islám and its Prophet; that Moses had made
his will in favour of Aaron and that Jesus had selected Simon Peter to
go and preach to the Jews on the same day in their own lives.
The waters that acknowledged ’Alí to be the Prophet’s successor became
“sweet” or fresh on the eighteenth of Zú-’l-hijjah. The rest either
remained salt or turned brackish. The birds that accepted ’Alí as
Muhammad’s heir were taught to sing like a nightingale or to talk like
a parrot. Those that denied him were stricken deaf and dumb. For the
angels who delighted to honour him a sumptuous palace was built with
slabs of gold and silver in alternate order. Two hundred thousand domes
crowned this edifice, and half of them were made of red rubies, and
half of green emeralds. Through the courtyard flowed four rivers: one
with water, one with milk, another with honey, and a fourth with wine.
Trees of gold, bearing fruits of turquoise, grew along the banks, and
on the branches were perched the most marvellous birds. Their bodies
were made of pearls, their right wings of rubies, and their left wings
of turquoises. All the hosts of heaven gathered together, praising God.
The birds dived, singing, into the streams. The angels clapped their
hands and shouted. The houris joined in the chorus. Then, with one
accord, they all raised their voices in homage of ’Alí and his wife,
the Prophet’s daughter, Fatima. Lovers should remember to strengthen
the bond of affection by exchanging rings. The men should kiss each
other frequently whenever and wherever they meet. The servants should
kiss their master’s hands, and the children those of their parents. If
a Muslim smile on his brother-Muslim on this holy a’yád, God will smile
on him on the day of the resurrection. If he die, he will receive the
rewards of a martyr of the faith. If he call on a true believer, he
will be visited in the grave when he draws his last breath by seventy
thousand angels. If he neglect neither the ordained prayer nor the
prescribed purification, he will be entitled to rank with the man to
whom God has granted the rewards of one hundred thousand pilgrimages
to Mecca. And a week later, on the 25th of Zú-’l-hijjah, the angel of
revelations brought down from heaven to the Prophet the chapter of the
Kurán, entitled Man, and told Muhammad that God congratulated him on
the virtues of his family.
VIII.--PERSIAN SÚFÍISM; AND PERSIAN SHIAHISM IN ITS RELATION TO THE
PERSIAN PASSION-DRAMA.
Since the narrative which follows this introduction is written rather
from the Persian and Shiah than from the Turkish and Sunni point of
view, it is necessary for us to dwell briefly on two more important
subjects in connection with Persian thought:--(_a_) on the love of
metaphysical speculation which vindicates the claim of Aryan thought
to be free, and which has given rise to the doctrines of Súfíism,--our
immediate consideration; and (_b_) on the growth of Shiahism, the State
religion, and more particularly in its relation to the Passion-Drama,
which is the outcome of the Muharram celebrations in honour of Huseyn’s
martyrdom.
(_a_) _Persian Súfíism._
Now the Súfís, who are split up into numerous sects, with slightly
varying doctrines, speak of themselves as travellers, for they regard
life as a journey from their earthly abode to the spiritual world. The
stages between them and their destination are reckoned as seven. Some
call them seven regions, and others seven towns. Unless the traveller
get rid of his animal passions and pass safely through these seven
stages he cannot hope to lose himself in the ocean of Union, nor slake
his thirst for immortality in the unexampled wine of Love. The first
region before the traveller, the region of Aspiration, can only be
traversed on the charger of Patience. Though a thousand temptations
beset him on the road he must not lose heart, but must seek to cleanse
his mind from all selfish desires. Other-worldliness should alone
absorb his thoughts, and to that end the gates of friendship and of
enmity should be closed against the people of the world. Only thus can
he find his way into the heart of the realm, wherein every traveller is
a lover in search of the True Beloved.
One day Majnún, whose love for Laili has inspired many a Persian
poet, was playing in a little sand heap when a friend came to him and
said--“Why are you wasting your time in an occupation so childish?” “I
am seeking Laili in these sands,” replied Majnún: whereat his friend,
all lost in amazement, cried--“Why, Laili is an angel, so what is the
use of seeking her in the common earth?” “I seek her everywhere,” said
Majnún, bowing his head, “that I may find her somewhere.”
And so the traveller, on this stage of his pilgrimage, should regard
no earthly abode as too humble a shrine for the spirit of the True
Beloved. He should eat, but only to live; he should drink, but only
to love; and, though all worldlings should be shunned, he should keep
in touch with the hearts of his fellow-travellers lest, peradventure,
he might lose a guide to his destination. Now, if he find in this
region some sign from the Unsigned, and trace the lost Beloved, he
will pass forthwith into the limitless bourne of Devotion, and see
the setting of the sun of Inspiration, and watch in rapture the dawn
of Love. At this time the crops of Wisdom are burnt in the fire of
Affection, and the traveller loses all consciousness of self; he knows
neither knowledge nor ignorance; he recognises neither certainty nor
doubt; but, turning his back on the dusk of perplexity, he rides breast
forward on the charger of Pain and Endurance, drawing ever nearer to
the light of salvation. In this Kingdom of the Soul, he will know
nothing but tribulation unless he strive strenuously to escape from
himself on the wings of self-renunciation. “Oh, traveller, if thou
wouldst gaze on the Joseph face of thy Beloved turn not away from the
Egypt of Love! And wouldst thou attain to divine truth, oh learn the
way of friendship from the grate, consuming thyself for the sake of the
True Beloved! For the love that thou wouldst find demands the sacrifice
of self to the end that the heart may be filled with the passion to
stand within the Holy of Holies, in which alone the mysteries of the
True Beloved can be revealed unto thee. This is so.”
[Illustration: A PERSIAN SUFÍ OF THE ORDER OF THE LATE SEPHÍ ’ALÍ SHÁH.]
And thenceforward the traveller, his heart aglow with the sacred
fire of Love, tears aside the curtain of earthly passions, and wins
his way into the Kingdom of Knowledge. He has passed by slow degrees
from doubt into certainty and from darkness into light. Seeing with
clearer eyes he is now quick to discern wisdom in ignorance and in
oppression justice. Then, on ascending hopefully the ladder of Wisdom,
he rises higher and higher above the ocean of being, and enters into
closer communion with the spirit of the one he seeks. The arc of truth
becomes an almost perfect round, and he is drawn irresistibly towards
the centre, where dwells the object of his quest. After traversing the
realm of knowledge, which is the last stage of fear, the traveller
enters the first City of Union, and drinks deep from the bowl of its
spirit: and the next thing he does is to enter the chamber of the True
Beloved. As all the shine of the sea and its shade are reflected in the
heart of a single pearl, so now the infinite splendour is manifested
within the traveller’s soul. Looking round him with the eyes of Unity
he recognises his true identity in that of his host, and reads the name
of the Beloved in his own name. The circle of his aspirations will soon
be complete, for the sun of divine grace is seen to rise equally on
all creatures; and he is prepared in spirit to advance one step nearer
the end. And soon, on the breeze of godly independence, which blows
from the spirit’s flame and burns the curtain of poverty, the traveller
is borne into the City of Freedom. There he will know no sorrow, but
will pass through the gates of joy, and, though he be on the earth,
will ride the heaven of power, and quench his thirst in the wine of
love. The sixth stage on the road to immortality is that of Amazement.
Sometimes he will notice perfect poverty in riches, and sometimes
perfect wealth in poverty. His surprise will grow at every step. Each
second will bring a fresh revelation. Now he will dive into the ocean
of divine omniscience, and now be carried to the crest of omnipotence
divine.
The traveller passes swiftly from this stage into the region of
absolute poverty and nothingness, which is the true forgetfulness of
self in the love of the Beloved. He is now as a pearl in the sea of
the infinite splendour: poor in the things created, but rich beyond
counting in the things that are spiritual and pure. And thus, casting
aside the burden of consciousness for ever, he becomes one with the
Beloved and enters the Kingdom of Immortality. The renunciation of
self, therefore, is the Alpha and Omega of the Súfí doctrine: the
lover, in other words, must turn the Beloved, otherwise he can never
hope to gain admittance into the Chamber of Love. “One came to the
Beloved’s door and knocked. And a voice from within whispered, ‘Who
is there?’ And the lover answered, saying, ‘It is I.’ Then the voice
said, ‘There is not room in this house for thee and me,’ and the door
was not opened unto him. So the lover went back into the desert and
fasted and prayed. And at the end of a year he returned once more to
the Beloved’s door and knocked. And the voice from within said again,
‘Who is there?’ And this time the lover, having learned the lesson of
self-renunciation, answered, ‘It is thyself,’ and the door was opened
unto him.”
(_b_) _The Shiah Faith in its Relation to the Persian Passion Play._
The Shiah faith is as old as ’Alí; for, on the feast of Ghadir, he is
said to have been selected by Muhammad as his successor. In the ages
immediately succeeding the Prophet, it spread itself East and West. The
Muslim colonies, in various parts of the Empire, embraced its political
teaching. It took root even in Mecca and Medina; but it was in Persia
alone that it grew, in the Ninth Century, to be the State religion,
waning and waxing in its hold on the people during the dynastic
changes to which the country subsequently submitted itself; until,
in the declining years of the Fifteenth Century, under the Safaví
Kings, it re-established its grip, this time for good, on the national
conscience. The mourning celebration of the month of Muharram, in which
the whole country, with the exception of the Sunnis, takes part to
this day, was founded in the Tenth Century by Ahmad Muizz-u’d-Dawlat.
In order to appreciate the depth of feeling underlying this yearly
commemoration, the reigns of the early Caliphs must be reviewed. For,
in the story of the family of the Tent, lies the _raison d’être_ of the
Muharram celebration.
When Muhammad died he was succeeded by his father-in-law, Abú Bekr, a man
of great prudence and sincere piety. His rule was accepted by all the
Prophet’s companions, if we except the Hashemites, who, under the
leadership of ’Alí, declined at first to take the oath of fidelity. But
the death of Fatima, the wife of ’Alí, so subdued the spirit of her
husband that he made his peace with the aged Caliph, who died after
a reign of two years, bequeathing his sceptre to the iron hand of
the incorruptible Omar. In the twelfth year of a reign of unexampled
glory Omar was assassinated, and his successor was elected by six of
his most trustworthy lieutenants. Othman, the man chosen by them, had
been Muhammad’s secretary: he was not a successful ruler. His helpless
character and resourcelessness of mind succumbed to the burden of his
responsibilities; his subjects rose in arms throughout his Empire, and
the treachery of one of his secretaries hastened his downfall. The
brother of Ayeshah is believed to have led the assassins, and Othman,
with the Kurán on his knees, was pierced with a multitude of wounds.
He died in the year 655 A.D., in the eleventh year of his reign. The
inauguration of ’Alí put an end to the anarchy that ensued; but,
with all his bravery and all the brilliancy of his endowments, ’Alí
was alike too forbearing and too magnanimous to cope successfully with the
difficulties of his position. He was not so much a politician as a
poet turned knight-errant, a religious enthusiast turned soldier. The
first Caliph would have secured the allegiance of Telha and Zobeir,
two of the most powerful of the Arabian chieftains, by gifts. Omar,
the second Caliph, would have insured his authority and checked their
lawlessness by casting them into prison. Whereas ’Alí, from purely
chivalrous motives, left them to their own devices without, however,
in his contempt for what he had condemned in another as self-seeking
generosity, bribing them to keep the peace. And so Telha and Zobeir
escaping from Medina, fled, and raised the standard of revolt in
Assyria. The Prophet’s widow, Ayeshah, the implacable enemy of ’Alí,
accompanied them, and was present at the battle in which the Caliph,
at the head of twenty-nine thousand men, defeated the enemy, and in
which the rebel leaders were slain. This battle was called the Day of
the Camel: for, “in the heat of the action, seventy men, who held the
bridle of Ayeshah’s camel, were successively killed or wounded; and the
cage or litter in which she sat was struck with javelins and darts like
the quills of a porcupine.” Ayeshah was reproached by the victorious
’Alí, and then sent under escort to Medina where she lived to the end
of her days at her husband’s tomb.
Meanwhile, Moawiyah, the son of Abú Sophian, had assumed the title
of Caliph and won the support of the Syrians and the interest of the
house of Ommiyah, and against him ’Alí now marched. Mounted on a
piebald horse, and wielding his two-edged sword with terrific effect,
he literally ploughed his way through the ranks of the Syrians, crying
out at every stroke of the blade, “God is victorious.” In the course
of the night in which the battle raged he was heard to repeat “that
tremendous exclamation” four hundred times. Nothing save flight would
have saved his enemies, had not the crafty Moawiyah exposed on the
foremost lances the sacred books of the Kurán, thus turning the pious
zeal of his opponents against themselves; and ’Alí, in the face of
his followers’ awe, was constrained to submit to a humiliating truce.
In his grief and anger he retreated to Kufa; his party was dejected;
the distant provinces of Persia, of Yemen, and of Egypt acclaimed his
stealthy rival; and he himself, in the mosque of his city of refuge,
fell a victim to a fanatic’s knife.
Moawiyah, after the death of ’Alí, brought about the abdication of the
latter’s son Hasan, who, retiring without regret from the Palace of
Kufá, went to live in a hermit’s cell near the tomb of the Prophet, his
grandfather. There he was poisoned, and, as many believe, by his wife.
But Huseyn, his younger brother, was not set aside so easily. In every
way worthy to inherit the regal and sacerdotal office, he added to
Hasan’s benevolence and piety, no insignificant measure of his father’s
indomitable spirit, having served with honour against the Christians
in the siege of Constantinople. So that, when Moawiyah proclaimed
his son Yazid, who was as dissolute as he was weak-minded, to be the
Commander of the Faithful and the successor of the Apostle of God,
Huseyn, who was living in Medina at the time, scorned to acknowledge
the title of the youth, whose vicious habits he despised. One hundred
and forty thousand Muslims of Kufá and thereabouts professed their
attachment to Huseyn’s cause, and a list of these adherents of his was
transmitted to Medina. Against the advice of his wisest friends, he
resolved to traverse the desert of Arabia, and to appear on the banks
of the Euphrates--a river held sacred to this day by every Shiah. He
set out with his family, crossed the barren expanse of desert, and
approached the confines of Assyria, where he was alarmed by the hostile
aspect of the country and “suspected either the ruin or the defection
of his party.” His fears were well founded. Obeidullah, the Governor
of Kufá, had quelled the rising insurrection; and Huseyn, in the
plain of Kerbela, was surrounded by a body of five thousand horse,
who cut off his communication with the city and the river. Rather
than retreat to a fortress in the desert and confide in the fidelity
of the tribe of Tai he proposed to the chief of the enemy the choice
of three honourable courses of action--that he should be allowed to
return to Medina, or be stationed in a frontier garrison against the
Turks, or safely conducted to the presence of Yazid. He was informed
that he must surrender unconditionally or accept the consequences of
his rebellion. “Do you think to terrify me with death?” he replied, and
to his sister Zainab, who deplored the impending ruin of his house,
he said: “Our trust is in God alone. All things, both in heaven and in
earth, must perish and return to their Creator. My brother [Hasan], my
father [’Alí], my mother [Fatima], were better than I am; and every
Mussulman has an example in the Prophet.” His little band of followers
consisted only of thirty-two horsemen and forty foot soldiers. He
begged them to make good their own escape by a hasty flight; but they
held firm to their allegiance, refusing to desert him in his straits.
In return he prayed that God might accept his death as a propitiation
for their sins; they vowed they would not survive him, and the family
of the Tent, as Huseyn and his fellow-martyrs are lovingly called by
the Shiahs, passed the night in holy devotions.
The last hours of their lives cannot be more tersely told, and
therefore more suitably to our purpose, than in the words of Gibbon:
“On the morning of the fatal day, Huseyn mounted on horseback, with
his sword in one hand and the Kurán in the other; his generous band
of martyrs were secured in their flanks and rear, by the tent-ropes
and by a deep trench which they had filled with lighted faggots,
according to the practice of the Arabs. The enemy advanced with
reluctance, and one of their chiefs deserted, with thirty followers,
to claim the partnership of inevitable death. In a very close onset,
or single combat, the despair of the Fatimites was invincible; but
the surrounding multitude galled them from a distance with a cloud
of arrows, and the horses and men were successively slain: a truce
was allowed on both sides for the hour of prayer; and the battle at
length expired by the death of the last of the companions of Huseyn.
Alone, weary, and wounded, he seated himself at the door of his tent.
As he tasted a drop of water he was pierced in the mouth with a dart;
and his son and nephew, two beautiful youths, were killed in his
arms. He lifted his hands to heaven; they were full of blood, and he
uttered a funeral prayer for the living and the dead. In a transport
of despair his sister issued from the tent, and adjured the general
of the Cufians that he would not suffer Huseyn to be murdered before
his eyes; a tear trickled down his venerable beard; and the boldest of
his soldiers fell back on every side as the dying hero threw himself
among them. The remorseless Shamer, a name detested by the Faithful,
reproached their cowardice; and the grandson of Mahomet was slain
with three and thirty strokes of lances and swords. After they had
trampled on his body, they carried his head to the castle of Kufá, and
the inhuman Obeidullah struck him on the mouth with a cane. ‘Alas!’
exclaimed an aged Mussulman, ‘on these lips have I seen the lips of
the Prophet of God!’ In a distant age and climate the tragic scene of
the death of Huseyn will awaken the sympathy of the coldest reader. On
the annual festival of his martyrdom, in the devout pilgrimage to his
sepulchre, his Persian votaries abandon their souls to the religious
frenzy of sorrow and indignation.”
The date of Huseyn’s death was the tenth of Muharram. The month is
one of mourning throughout the Shiah world, every man and every woman
wearing black, and Passion plays based on the tragedy of the Tent
being performed in all the chief cities and even in the more important
villages of Persia, while the day itself is made the occasion of a
yearly outburst of grief, of rage, and of fanaticism, which is as
unbridled as it is sincere. On this the Day of Cutting, processions
bearing banners draped in black pass weeping through the streets; the
Muslim Friars, or, to give them their true title, the Seyyid Rúsé
Kháns, lead the way, rending their naked breasts with knives or with
needles, and swelling the shouts of “Yá-Huseyn! Yá-Hasan!” with the
refrains of their wildest hymns. The flow of blood drives the populace
beside itself. In every thoroughfare men of the lower classes run to
join the ranks of the mourners, laying bare their right shoulders and
breasts to the weapons they carry. And soon every ward of every city
in the country echoes and re-echoes, not less to the curses showered
on the head of Omar, than to the cries in lamentation of ’Alí’s
assassination, of Hasan’s murder, and of Huseyn’s martyrdom. The
universal mourning animates the collective body of the nation as with
one soul. If it is mixed with a mean hatred for a man of unrivalled
integrity and force of character, it is still, as the expression of the
nation’s love for its chosen hero, a sentiment of loyal devotion and
enduring compassion. The noise of the grief over Huseyn’s remote death
may ring discordant, unphilosophic, and almost barbaric, in these days
of the lukewarm enthusiasms and uninspiring scepticism which sap the
energies of the more cultured of mankind; but it rings all the more
moving to those who can hear and understand. For “it is the noise of
the mourning of a nation” mighty in its grief, as Lionel Tennyson has
it.
So true and so deep is this outburst of sorrow that every Englishman
who believes the Persian people to be corrupt should weigh well his
evidence before he passes a sentence so sweeping and so unjust. The
nobility of a nation is dependent, not so much on ends which consist
in “immediate material possession” of European means and methods of
transport, as “on its capability of being stirred by memories,” on its
faculty to animate an alien creed with the breath of its own spirit,
or on the courage of its conscience to remain incorruptible in the day
of persecution and death. These tests, though they be of the spirit
and as such unworthy of the consideration of a trading nation and a
commercial age, would, if applied to Persia, raise that distressful
country to the rank of the first eminence. The power of steam, though
it rules the waves and devours distance, has its limits as a civilising
influence, among mankind. It cannot fill the hungry heart, though it
may be the means of overloading the belly; much less, if less may be,
can it inspire in the soul by its achievements the passion whereof
the religious drama of Persia is the embodiment. The incorruptibility
of the Persian’s outlook on spiritual truth has been vindicated in
the blood of countless martyrs, and out of his susceptibility to be
inspired by the heroism of the mighty dead, or, to put the proposition
more particularly, out of his unfeigned devotion to the memory of the
family of the Tent, has sprung the Shiah Passion-drama, as from the
depth of a whole Empire’s sorrow. Were it not so, the growth of the
Miracle-play, that passionate outcry of the Aryan spirit in the Persian
Muslim, would be a miracle indeed.
The truth is, the Shiah religious drama makes a most touching appeal
to the best qualities of the heart and the mind. In its pathos, the
episode of the Tent recalls the tragedy of Calvary, and the virtues
of the members of the House of Hashem might have been modelled on
those of the twelve Apostles of Christ. The sublime figure of Huseyn
stands out among them as the redeemer of his people. As the Founder of
Christianity was tempted of the devil in the wilderness to forego His
lofty mission that He might gain a worldly kingdom, so Huseyn, in the
scene on the plain of Kerbela, rejects the assistance offered to him by
the King of the Jinns on purpose to atone for the sins of his people
by death. On the Cross Christ’s heart forsook him--once, and only
once. It was when He cried: “My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
me?” In like manner the heroic Huseyn, within sight of Kufá, having
to baffle the attack of Yazíd and his hosts by turning aside from the
direct road leading to his city of refuge, and seeing the exceeding
anguish of his beloved sister Zainab, had felt the sting of his own
destiny: “Ye crooked conducted spheres,” he had cried, “how long will
ye tyrannise over us? How long will ye act thus cruelly to the family
of God’s Prophet?” Then, nerving himself to the trial, he prophesied
his death on the morrow, and said, with his customary fortitude, that
the sacrifice of himself and his companions was not a cause for grief,
since it would work for the salvation of his grandfather’s people; and
thenceforward his resolution to meet the fate he had chosen for himself
never swerved; not even when the very angels of heaven sought to save
his life from sheer love of a soul so dauntless and so incorruptible.
The reward of his martyrdom is won in the last scene of all, which
represents the resurrection. The Prophet, failing to save his followers
from punishment, notwithstanding the united efforts of himself, of
’Alí, and of Hasan, throws away his rod, his cloak, and his turban,
in his disappointment. Nor is he in the least pacified until Gabriel
makes it clear to him that Huseyn, who “has suffered most,” must lend
him the assistance he requires. The compassionate heart of the man is
wrung, so that when Huseyn makes his appearance it is to receive from
his magnanimous grandsire the key of intercession. The Prophet says to
him: “Go thou, and deliver from the flames every one who hath in his
lifetime shed a single tear for thee, every one who hath in any way
helped thee, every one who hath performed a pilgrimage to thy shrine,
or mourned for thee, and every one who hath written tragic verses to
thee. Bear each and all with thee to Paradise.” And this being done,
all the sinners redeemed by their mediator enter into heaven, crying:
“God be praised! by Huseyn’s grace we are made happy, and by his favour
we are delivered from destruction.”
One word more. Among the sinners whom Muhammad commanded Huseyn to
rescue from hell-fire, as the reader will have read, perhaps with a
smile, were those who had written tragic verses in praise of the martyr
of the Tent. His smile may, possibly, ring out in a laugh when we
inform him that the Seyyid Rúzé Kháns, the Shiah friars, are said to
have been the originators of the Passion-drama. The foresight of the
authors in thus securing for themselves an entrance into Paradise and
for their fellow-writers the yearly prayers of the endless generations
of mankind, was it not ingenuously artful?
PART II
PART II
THE STORY OF THE PILGRIMAGE
CHAPTER I
LONDON TO JIDDAH
On bidding good-bye to the mighty capital of the world I reminded her
that though her sombre stone mansions and teeming streets--and shall
I say her epic atmosphere?--have for me an unspeakable charm, I was
glad to be on my way to the city of great concourse, towards which
I had so often turned my face in prayer, and in which the hearts of
many millions of people are deeply rooted. Indeed, so certain are the
majority of finding salvation within her sacred walls that it would be
no exaggeration to declare their highest aspiration to be to see Mecca
and die. Ah, well, I for one shall pray to see London again, for how
could I ever forget the least of her gifts to me? Dear Alma Mater, _au
revoir_!
While I was thus meditating the train puffed out of the station, and
the shore of the English Channel was reached. The weather was mild,
the sky was clear; even the worst sailor might feel sure of having a
delightful passage, and I, praise the Powers, am a good sailor. And
so it was: we reached the neighbouring shore without the slightest
qualm, and arrived in Paris at six o’clock in the morning. Many people
were already on the move--unlike London, where hardly anybody is seen
about at that time of the day, except, perhaps, the loitering scum that
begins to rise from the excess of the previous night’s libations. On
the way from the Gare du Nord to the Gare de Lyon I noticed signs of
the festivities in connection with the Centenary of Victor Hugo, and I
could not help admiring the new statue raised this year to commemorate
the strenuous genius of that great man. One short hour in Paris, then
our train sped southward in brilliant sunshine, which seemed to draw me
nearer to that burning Arabian land whither I was bound.
On my arrival at Marseilles I booked a berth on board the steamer
_Rewa_, belonging to the British India Steam Navigation Company, as it
proved to be the only one that would enable me to reach Port Said and
to proceed thence to Suez by rail in time to catch the connection by
boat to Jiddah.
I shall neither tax the reader’s patience nor trespass on my space by
relating the trivial incidents of a voyage that presented little of
interest to a travel-worn mind. It will be enough to say that the wind,
which was as fair as one could desire till we reached the Straits of
Messina, was bent afterwards on making another and an angrier sea. The
discomfort of the passengers, most of whom were Britains bound for
India, was betrayed by their seclusion from the open air. The nearer
we approached the East, the more kindly grew the elements, until,
on the seventh day, about seven o’clock in the morning, Port Said
hove in sight. An hour later I had packed my kit and was ready for a
hearty landing. Steaming slowly into the canal we passed the pier,
which was still in course of construction, saluted the statue of de
Lesseps, and raised a shout of surprise on counting not less than five
Russian warships before we had reached our moorings. Those guardians of
Russian prestige had come from Chinese waters, had remained five days
at Suez, and were now coaling at Port Said, where they had arrived on
the previous day. Not one single British man-of-war was to be seen. I
had my breakfast at eight, after which I bade farewell to the captain
and my travelling companions, going ashore in one of the boats that
surrounded our steamer.
Two trains start from Port Said to Suez every day, one in the forenoon
and one in the evening. The line as far as Ismailia is a narrow tramway
having a gauge of 2ft. 8in.; the cars are consequently both narrow
and uncomfortable, and take about three hours to do the journey. On
my bidding good-bye to the dragoman I had engaged, he assured me
that he was far too devout a Muslim to fleece so pious a pilgrim as
myself, and he would not accept a centime more than five francs for
the boat, the carriage, and his special services. It was from him that
I first heard of the outbreak of cholera in Arabia--a report that was
unfortunately confirmed at Suez, whither I journeyed in the discomfort
of a dust-storm and a hot easterly wind. We arrived at Ismailia at one
o’clock, or thereabouts, having left Port Said at a quarter to ten
o’clock. This place, when the canal was being cut, was the headquarters
of the workmen; but now it has sunk in importance, many of the
buildings having actually fallen in ruins. Some of the managers of the
company, however, are still living there, and the best houses in the
town are at their disposal. Employment is provided on the canal for
some hundred and twenty pilots, most of whom are Greeks and Frenchmen,
though a few Englishmen have been recently added to the staff. The
railway from Cairo to Suez, which belongs to the Egyptian Government,
passes through Ismailia and picks up the passengers for Suez who have
travelled so far by the Canal Company’s toy line. Henceforward the
journey was made in comfort, for the line, though a single one, is
a standard British gauge and the train provided with an excellent
waggon-restaurant. Nearly all the passengers on board were Arabs and
low-class Europeans in the third-class compartments. We stopped at
three stations on the way, and every time it happened we were greeted
by a weird chorus of Arab song, of which the burden was the “Wondrous
names of God and the virtues of His Prophet.” I was somewhat amused
to hear the words, “Not I, by God!” in reply to my inquiry as to
whether or not a certain Arab would be good enough to fetch a bottle
of soda water for me. For I, being unused to the climate, had suffered
tortures from thirst in the scorching heat and driving dust-clouds,
the intervals between the stages being extremely long and tedious--in
fact, it took the train seven hours and a quarter to cover the hundred
miles that separate Port Said from Suez. Nor was the prospect of a
sort to slake the thirst of the weary pilgrim. All along the line hugs
the right bank of the canal, and nothing is to be seen except the soft
white sand of the glowing desert, unless it be an occasional patch of
green grass or a cluster of date trees, irrigated by the fresh-water
canal newly cut in order to conduct the much-needed water from a spot
near Cairo to Port Said and Suez, the latter a place which stands in
sore want of the cleansing and refreshing element.
[Illustration: A PILGRIM “AT SEA”--SUEZ RAILWAY STATION.]
[Illustration: A GROUP OF MIXED PILGRIMS.]
On my arrival at the station a dragoman, one of the plagues of Egypt,
joined himself to my suite, informing me with glib mendacity that
he carried both Arabia and the Land of the Pyramids in his pocket,
whereas, as a matter of fact, he had not once left his native town.
However, as I could not shake the fellow off, I made the best of a
bad bargain by taking him out shopping with me. First, I bought a deep
crimson fez with a long black silk tassel and a straw lining. Though
it looked both cool and fanciful, and was therefore pleasing to my
Oriental eye, I am not certain that a turban would not have been more
in keeping with the complete Arab suit which I subsequently purchased.
This consisted of a thin linen shirt, a pair of trousers, and two long
and graceful robes. The shirt was worn as long as a night-shirt, it
had no collar, and the roomy sleeves were left open at the wrists.
The trousers were more interesting, and of a curious shape and an odd
material, being made of thin white calico, and so cut that whereas an
elephant’s thigh could scarcely fill the ample width of the uppermost
part, one had the greatest difficulty in slipping the feet through
the lower ends which clung tightly round the ankles. As for the two
robes, which were long enough to cover the nether garments, the inner
one was made of the finest silk, striped in successive colours of red,
yellow, and green, and was left entirely open in front, but the left
breast overlapped the right, to which it was buttoned from the armpits
downwards. The outer habit of a blueish colour served as a cloak to
the inner one, was made of the same material, and cut in precisely the
same way. No socks were worn, and the shoes were not unlike ordinary
slippers, with this exception, that they were turned up at the toes.
On donning this picturesque attire I returned to the Hôtel d’Orient by
way of the narrow and filthy bazaars, where my attention was attracted
by a band of dancers who were drawing together a crowd of sightseers
of every nationality. While one man was cutting his capers in the
skin of a Polar bear, a second, tambourine in hand, powdered his face
to imitate a European, while a third, got up in guise of a Negro,
played with a lively monkey in chains, and three dancing girls with
huge artificial moles on their faces completed the company. All these,
including the monkey, pranced up and down to the tune vociferated by
the women and accompanied on the tambourine by the man with the white
face, repeating at intervals the shrill cry of “Hullá-hee-há-há.”
As I sat within the courtyard of the Hotel, listening to the voice
of the Greek prima donna who sang nightly to the assembled guests, I
could not refrain from smiling within myself at the transformation
in my appearance and demeanour which recalled to my memory a line of
Obaid Zakani’s satire of “The Mouse and the Cat,” which runs: “Be of
good cheer, comrades, the cat has become pious.” These glad tidings
were spread abroad by a little mouse that, having hidden itself under
the altar of a mosque at Kirmán, overheard the cat reading aloud the
passage of repentance, meekly kneeling on its knees. Unfortunately the
cat, the symbol of vicious cunning, broke its vows a little time after,
and I wondered how far and how long I should succeed in keeping mine.
Next morning I came across a blind Arabian priest patiently waiting on
the landing-stage for the departure of the steamer, and in the evening
he was still in the self-same spot, kneeling on his prayer-rug and
singing aloud the verses of the Kurán in a deep original Arab melody,
rosary in hand. His young son was kneeling by his side, listening with
downcast eyes to the never-ceasing chants of his father, who knew by
heart every word of the sacred book, to say nothing of the saddening
elegies of the Arabian traditionists. Like most of the singers of the
East, who pour out their rhapsodies all day long in an ever-flowing
torrent of melody, he was extremely monotonous, and so I sought to stem
the current of his song by entering into conversation with him. On
hearing from me that he would be obliged to descend into the hell of
the Turkish quarantine and to remain there five days before he could
hope to ascend into the pilgrim’s paradise of Mecca, a look of keen
distress swept like a cloud over his enraptured countenance. Rising
slowly to his feet, he raised his sightless eyes, saying: “God, if
it please Him, will provide me with a swift means of transport to
His city. We shall meet again.” So confident was his tone that my
own misgivings yielded to the hope that I should yet overcome the
difficulty of the quarantine. And soon after I was informed that all
the first-class passengers on board the last pilgrim boat would be
allowed to proceed to their destination without let or hindrance,
but the unfortunate deck passengers would have to conform to the
regulations. Never was the privilege of wealth and the curse of poverty
brought home to the hearts of the weary in a more convincing fashion.
The next best thing to being wealthy, I told myself, is to have the
prerogatives of wealth thrust upon one.
Having had my passport _viséd_, I booked a berth and went on board
the Khedivieh steamer, which completed the distance between Suez and
Jiddah--some six hundred and forty-five nautical miles--in about eighty
hours. At ordinary times these steamers are simply employed on the mail
service, one of them leaving Suez for Jiddah every week--generally on
Thursday--and another leaving Jiddah for Suez on the same day. Though
they practically belong to a British syndicate, they go under the name
of Khedivieh steamers. The captain and the chief officers are English,
whereas the crew are Egyptians and Lascars. During the pilgrimage
steamers run frequently between the two ports, and in the year 1902
not less than two hundred thousand pilgrims, I was told, had landed at
Jiddah, the majority of whom embarked at Suez. Among these numbers
must be reckoned the eighty thousand Russian subjects from the Caucasus
and Central Asia, who, for the first time since they came under the
Russian rule, had been granted the privilege of undertaking the ancient
pilgrimage. Rumour credited them with being the main cause of the
cholera that year. If only the half of what I heard about them were
true their pollution would still beggar description.
The cruise in the Red Sea is not so interesting as that in the
Mediterranean. Save an occasional ragged rock rising from the yellow
waters, or a flight of white birds over the steamer, nothing was to be
seen from hour to hour.
[Illustration: PREPARING TO EMBARK AT SUEZ.]
When we sighted the port of Jiddah, which I shall describe by-and-by,
we were told to put on our ihrám, or sacred habit, before entering
the holy territory on our way to Mecca. As a preliminary, I at once
removed my Arabian costume, washed my hands, up to the elbow, and my
feet, up to the knees; I afterwards shaved the upper lip, leaving the
fresh-grown, unsightly beard to its own fate. Then, having performed
the prescribed ablution of the head, I closed my eyes and expressed,
with the tongue of my heart, the earnest desire to cast off the garb of
unrighteousness and pride and to put on the winding-sheet of humility
and of passive obedience to God’s will. Last of all, that I might be
worthy to visit His house, I prostrated myself on the prayer-rug and
said aloud the following formula of devotion: “O Almighty God, Thou art
without a mate; I praise Thy sovereign grace with all my heart; Thou
art pure and everlasting;” then I repeated three times: “O Lord, Thou
art without a mate,” adding, “I praise, O Lord, Thy apostle Muhammad
and his disciples and his family; in like manner, I also praise our
father Abraham and his house.” The next thing I said was: “Send down
upon me, O Lord, the healthful spirit of Thy satisfaction; open unto
me, I beseech Thee, the gates of Paradise, and shelter me from the fire
of Hell.” And this petition I also repeated three times. I was then
ready to don the sacred habit.
Now, my ihrám, which I had bought at Suez, consisted of two thin
woollen wrappers and a pair of sandals. One wrapper was tied about the
middle and allowed to fall all round to the ankles, while the other
was thrown over the shoulders, leaving my head and the forearms bare.
Both wrappers were spotlessly white, and had neither seam nor hem. The
sandal was a kind of shoe, consisting of a sole fastened to the foot by
means of a tie which passed between the large toe and the first toe of
the foot; it left uncovered both the instep and the heel. This sacred
habit was worn by all pilgrims during the four days preceding the Hájj
Day. While they have it on they must neither hunt nor fowl, though they
are allowed to fish--a doubtful privilege in a dry land. This precept,
according to Ahmad Ebn Yûsuf, is so strictly observed that nothing will
induce pilgrims to kill so much as a flea. We are told by Al Beidáwí,
however, that there are some noxious animals that they have permission
to kill during the pilgrimage, such animals, for instance, as kites,
ravens, scorpions, mice, and dogs given to bite. Pilgrims must keep
a constant watch over their words and their actions so long as they
wear the sacred habit. Not a single abusive word must be uttered; all
obscene discourse and all converse with women must be avoided; and not
a single woman’s face must be seen, save that of a wife, a sister, or a
cousin-german, _i.e._, a sister’s or a brother’s daughter. The men, as
I have said, must now doff their sewn clothes and must keep both their
faces and their heads uncovered; but the woman must be, as it were,
hermetically sealed in their stitched cloaks and veils. The only part
of their bodies that they have the right to expose, if they like, is
the palms of their hands. For the rest, they must not travel alone, but
must be accompanied by a man who may lawfully see them unveiled.
Poor pilgrims! They suffered from right and left. First came the
blood-suckers’ passport picnic. Here the pilgrim was plagued to death
with questions that the most cursory perusal of his safe-conduct had
rendered unnecessary. “Where do you come from? When did you leave? How
did you get here? What are your intentions? Why this? How that? When
the other?” The poorer pilgrims complained that they were positively
fleeced on the most frivolous pretexts. “Your passport is not properly
written; you must pay forty-eight piastres,” and so on.
Then the customs’ authorities emerged. “Will you walk into my parlour?”
these mosquitoes said to the pilgrims. To the imaginative mind the
buzzing which filled the room spelt the word _bakhshísh_. Woe betide
the pilgrim who did not so interpret the sound! All these officials, as
a Persian would say, had arms longer than their legs--in other words,
they reached out an itching palm to every pilgrim, and, casting an
appealing smile on him, seemed as though they would ask him to tickle
it with the counter-irritant of a “tip.” They opened my kit-bags
and turned everything topsy-turvy before I had time to bridle their
official zeal in the customary way. Among the contents were an English
newspaper and a novel, and these were promptly confiscated for no other
reason than that I had read them both. I cannot say that I made them a
present of my purse by way of pouring coals of fire on their heads. It
was otherwise in my case. I tied my purse-strings a little tighter,
and responded to their _bakhshísh_-coveting smiles with a smile equally
_bakhshísh_-coveting. It is wise, when you know the ropes, to husband
your resources till you reach the interior, for there your comfort in
travelling will depend on your having a purse well lined. By following
this rule, I was not so ill-prepared as I might otherwise have been to
meet the claims on my charity of the professional beggars who waylaid
my every step in the quaint old city of Jiddah.
Such a scene! Crowds of Arabs were lying on the filthy ground, which,
despite the heat, seemed strangely damp. Some were praying, some were
snoring, others were smoking, many were wrestling in the mud, but by
far the greater number of them merely dreamed away the passing hours,
too idle even to open their eyes. You might stay from sunrise to sunset
by the side of the more meditative among them without their showing the
least signs of life. How differently constituted are these loafers from
the free-born Arabs of the desert! The women held themselves somewhat
aloof from the men, and sat smoking their pipes, or chatting like
magpies, in groups of three or four. The sight of a new face seemed
to have lost its attraction for them, or perhaps they had grown weary
of criticising the gait and the appearance of the incoming pilgrims.
Having now seen a good many of them, however, as it were by stealth,
I think I may say with confidence that among the Arabs of Hejaz the
men are far better-looking than the women. This is mostly the women’s
own fault, for they ruin the beauty of their faces by tattooing their
chins. Were it not for this unsightly custom, peculiar to the Arabs,
the womenfolk, though corpulent, might be regarded as comely. The men,
on the other hand, are fairly handsome, being tall and lean, and having
high-bridged noses, flashing black eyes, and lofty foreheads. I am
speaking more especially of the wild Arabs of the desert and not of
the townsmen, whose faces, however handsome they may be, are too often
marred by an expression of cupidity and cunning.
Jiddah, though dirty, is a very picturesque city. It has narrow
serpentine streets which are rarely more than seven or eight feet wide,
and is surrounded by five turreted walls of great antiquity rising to
a height of twelve feet or so. Of these walls the northern measures in
length about seven hundred and thirty-one yards, the southern seven
hundred and sixty-nine, the eastern five hundred and eighty-five, the
western six hundred and twenty-four, and the south-eastern some three
hundred and seventy-nine. There are about three thousand houses in the
city, most of which are built of limestone and shut out from the street
by walls which sometimes conceal the roofs of the houses within. Here
and there a small window in the surrounding walls affords ventilation
to the house. It is only a few years since a big well was dug at a
place called Bashtar, some two miles distant from the city, the water
of which is conducted by means of underground passages. This well bears
the name of the reigning Sultan of Turkey. Pure drinking water being
scarce, sakkás or water-carriers are seen about the streets carrying
the precious liquid on their backs in big leathern bags. Of recent
years several mosques and caravanserais and one steam mill have been
erected outside the city walls. The governor’s residence, together
with the post-office and almost all of the more modern buildings, lies
outside the walls, facing the Red Sea. The shops, raised not more than
a foot above the ground, are about two yards and a half in width and
some three yards deep in the interior. Butchers, grocers, fruiterers,
and linen drapers are crowded together much as they are in an English
street. The babble within the bazaar is beyond description. Your first
conjecture is that a free fight is about to begin between the tradesman
and his customer; but, on making ready to intervene in the cause of
peace, you find to your pleasure or your chagrin that the vociferous
couple shake hands, first by touching the right hand and then by
raising both hands to the right eye, after which the shopkeeper makes
tender inquiries as to his customer’s health, and then the bargaining
begins. It took me over an hour to buy a few yards of cloth. The
ancient draper was too lazy to reach out for the stuff himself, so he
ordered his boy to bestir himself in my interests. The cloth being
handed to him, the draper fingered it caressingly, saying: “The cloth
is soft to the touch, its splendour dazzles the eyes! Such an exquisite
material has not been seen in this market for years!” The cloth was
to my liking, and so I made haste to ask the price of it. The draper
shook his head reprovingly. Then he said: “Hurry and haste belong
to Satan: I usually sell this cloth at thirty piastres a yard to my
customers, but to you I will sell it for twenty-five, because you have
found favour in my sight.” I made him a counter-bid of five piastres a
yard in order to cut the barter short. Whereupon the draper, nodding
in admiration of my guile, gazed around him for close on five minutes.
When he opened his mouth at last it was to say in his most winning
voice: “My good sir, since you are looking so well, so handsome, and so
distinguished, I will part with this priceless material at the trifling
cost to yourself of fifteen piastres a yard.” “Not so,” I replied.
“Since you are a bright old man I will increase my favour in your sight
by adding a piastre to my last bid; in other words, I now offer you
six piastres a yard.” The draper raised his hand to Heaven. “That is
impossible! I ask pardon of God.” I now turned on my heel and walked
away. He called me back at once. “Sir,” he said, “I would not have you
leave me in displeasure. Give whatever you like, the cloth is yours. I
am your sacrifice.” I retraced my steps. “Nonsense,” I returned; “how
is it possible for me to give what I like for the stuff, since you
are the tradesman and know its proper value?” The old man smiled, and
said, “Honoured sir, the lowest price I can possibly accept for this
material is ten piastres a yard.” It was now my turn to smile. “Sir,” I
replied, “I have no wish to offend you by leaving your shop, and so I
will buy the cloth from you for seven piastres a yard instead of going
to your rival yonder, who has offered to sell me some at six and a half
piastres.”
The draper then handed me a stool, and said, smiling, “You are not easy
to deal with. Come, sit down, and smoke this hukah, and we shall not
part in anger.” So I sat down in front of the shop, and while I sucked
meditatively at the pipe he handed to me, the stuff was measured, cut,
and folded, the tacit understanding between us being that we would
meet half-way, namely at eight piastres and a half. By the time I had
finished my smoke the material was ready for me, and so I lost no time
in returning to the hotel.
The harvest season of the shopkeepers is during the journeying months.
Their most striking characteristic in the eyes of a Persian pilgrim is
that they all wear white beards. The reason of this probably is that
young shopkeepers would stand not a ghost of a chance of competing
successfully with their elderly rivals. Moreover, all greybeards in the
Muhammadan religion are entitled to receive special veneration from the
young. Another reason is that nearly all the young men are employed by
the pilgrims as guides, as servants, and as drivers.
[Illustration: PILGRIMS EMBARKING AT SUEZ.]
[Illustration: BEFORE WEIGHING ANCHOR AT SUEZ.]
Everything moves slowly in these Arab towns. You will break the laws
of good breeding if you walk fast there. Consider the camel of the
desert, how he walks; he hurries not, neither does he make a sound: so
take this finnikin creature as your model and form your gait on the
camel’s. All Orientals pin implicit faith in the doctrine of “slow but
sure,” and when they give you some work they recommend you to be “slow
over it,” believing that a thing done smartly is not often done well.