The Valley Of Shathat Was
Quite Choked Up; And The Place Where It Is Thus Choked, Called From This
Circumstance El Sedd, Is Still To Be Seen.
The flame was seen at Yembo
and at Mekka.
An Arab of Teyma (a small town in the N.E. Desert from six
to eight days' journey from Medina) wrote a letter during night by the
light reflected from it to that distance.
"In the same year, a great inundation of the Tigris happened, by
which half the town of Baghdad was destroyed; and at the close of this
same year the temple of Medina itself was burnt to the ground.
"The Arabs were prepared to witness such a conflagration; for they
remembered the saying of Mohammed, that 'the day of judgment will not
happen until a fire shall appear in the Hedjaz, which shall cause the
necks of the camels at Basra to shine.'"]
From this account the stream of lava must be sought at about one
[p.360] hour distant to the E. of the town. The volcanic productions
which cover the immediate neighbourhood of the town and the plain to the
west of it, are probably owing to former eruptions of the same volcano;
for nothing is said, in the relation, of stones having been cast out of
the crater to any considerable distance, and the whole plain to the
westward, as far as Wady Akyk, three miles distant, is covered with the
above-described volcanic productions. I have little doubt that on many
other points of that great chain of mountains, similar volcanoes have
existed. The great number of warm springs found at almost every station
of the road to Mekka, authorises such a conjecture.
I am here induced, by a passage in the extract contained in the last
note, to offer the following remark. According to the strict precept of
Mohammed, that part of the territory of Medina which encompassed the
town in a circle of twelve miles, having on the S. side Djebel Ayre, and
on the N. side Djebel Thor, (a small mountain just behind Djebel Ohod,)
as the boundary, should be considered sacred; no person should be slain
therein, except aggressors, and enemies, in self-defence, or infidels
who polluted it; and neither game should be killed nor trees cut in such
a holy territory. This interdiction, however, is at present completely
set aside; trees are cut, game is killed, bloody affrays happen in the
town itself and
[p.361] in its immediate vicinity ; and though an avowed follower of any
other religion than the Mohammedan is not permitted to enter the gates
of the town, yet several instances occurred, during my stay there, (and
while I resided at Yembo,) of Greek Christians employed in the
commissariat of the army of Tousoun Pasha encamping within gun-shot of
Medina, previous to their departure for the head-quarters of the Pasha,
then in the province of Kasym.
[p.362] ACCOUNT OF SOME PLACES OF ZYARA,
OR OBJECTS OF PIOUS VISITATION IN THE NEIGHBOURHOOD OF MEDINA.
ON the day after the pilgrim has performed his first duties at the
mosque and the tomb, he usually visits the burial-ground of the town, in
memory of the many saints who lie buried there. It is just beyond the
town-walls, near the gate of Bab Djoma, and bears the name of El Bekya.
A square of several hundred paces is enclosed by a wall which, on the
southern side, joins the suburb, and on the others is surrounded with
date-groves. Considering the sanctity of the persons whose bodies it
contains, it is a very mean place; and perhaps the most dirty and
miserable burial-ground in any eastern town of the size of Medina. It
does not contain a single good tomb, nor even any large inscribed blocks
of stone covering tombs; but instead, mere rude heaps of earth, with low
borders of loose stones placed about them. The Wahabys are accused of
having defaced the tombs; and in proof of this, the ruins of small domes
and buildings are pointed out, which formerly covered the tombs of
Othman, Abbas, Setna Fatme, and the aunts of Mohammed, which owed their
destruction to those sectaries: but they would certainly not have
annihilated every other simple tomb built of stone here, which they did
neither at Mekka nor any other place. The miserable state of this
cemetery must have existed prior to the Wahaby conquest, and is to be
ascribed to the niggardly minds of the towns-people, who are little
disposed to
[p.363] incur any expense in honouring the remains of their celebrated
countrymen. The whole place is a confused accumulation of heaps of
earth, wide pits, rubbish, without a single regular tomb-stone. The
pilgrim is made to visit a number of graves, and, while standing before
them, to repeat prayers for the dead. Many persons make it their
exclusive profession to watch the whole day near each of the principal
tombs, with a handkerchief spread out, in expectation of the pilgrims
who come to visit them; and this is the exclusive privilege of certain
Ferrashyns and their families, who have divided the tombs among
themselves, where each takes his post, or sends his servant in his
stead.
The most conspicuous personages that lie buried here are Ibrahim, the
son of Mohammed, who died in his youth; Fatme, his daughter, according
to the opinion of many, who say that she was buried here and not in the
mosque; several of the wives of Mohammed; some of his daughters; his
foster-mother; Fatme, the daughter of Asad, and mother of Aly; Abbas ibn
Abd el Motalleb; Othman ibn Affan, one of the immediate successors of
Mohammed, who collected the scattered leaves of the Koran into one
volume; the Martyrs, or Shohada, as they are called, who were slain here
by the army of the heretics under Yezyd ibn Mawya, whose commander,
Moslim, in A.H. 60, (others say 62,) came from Syria and sacked the
town, the inhabitants of which had acknowledged the rebel Abdallah ibn
Hantala as their chief; Hassan ibn Aly, whose trunk only lies buried
here, his head having been sent to Cairo, where it is preserved in the
fine mosque called El Hassamya; the Imam Malek ibn Anes, the founder of
the sect of the Malekites.
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