(My Description Is Taken
From The Egyptian Mahmal.) When On The Road, It Serves As A Holy Banner
To The
Caravan; and on the return of the Egyptian caravan, the book of
prayers is exposed in the mosque El Hassaneyn,
At Cairo, where men and
women of the lower classes go to kiss it, and obtain a blessing by
rubbing their foreheads upon it. No copy of the Koran, nor any thing but
the book of prayers, is placed in the Cairo Mahmal. The Wahabys declared
this ceremony of the Hadj to be a vain pomp, of idolatrous origin, and
contrary to the spirit of true religion; and its use was one of the
principal reasons which they assigned for interdicting the caravans from
repairing to Mekka. In the first centuries of Islam, neither the
Omeyades nor the Abassides ever had a Mahmal. Makrisi, in his treatise
"On those Khalifes and Sultans who performed the pilgrimage in person,"
says that Dhaher Bybars el Bondokdary, Sultan of Egypt, was the first
who introduced the Mahmal, about A.H. 670. Since his time, all the
Sultans who sent their caravans to Mekka, have considered it as a
privilege to send one with each, as a sign of their own royalty. The
first Mahmal from Yemen came in A.H. 960; and in A.H.1049, El Moayed
Billah, king, and Imam of Yemen, who publicly professed the creed of
Zeyd, came with one to Arafat; and the caravans of Baghdad, Damascus,
and Cairo, have always carried it with them. In A.H. 730, the Baghdad
caravan brought it to Arafat upon an elephant (vide Asamy). I believe
the custom to have arisen in the battle-banner of the Bedouins, called
Merkeb and Otfe, which I have mentioned in my remarks on the Bedouins,
and which resemble the Mahmal, inasmuch as they are high wooden frames
placed upon camels.]
The preacher, or Khatyb, who is usually the Kadhy of Mekka, was mounted
upon a finely-caparisoned camel, which had been led up the steps; it
being traditionally said that Mohammed was always seated when he here
addressed his followers, a practice in which he was imitated by all the
Khalifes who came to the Hadj, and who from
[p.272] hence addressed their subjects in person. The Turkish gentleman
of Constantinople, however, unused to camel-riding, could not keep his
seat so well as the hardy Bedouin prophet; and the camel becoming
unruly, he was soon obliged to alight from it. He read his sermon from a
book in Arabic, which he held in his hands. At intervals of every four
or five minutes he paused, and stretched forth his arms to
implore blessings from above; while the assembled multitudes around and
before him, waved the skirts of their ihrams over their heads, and rent
the air with shouts of "Lebeyk, Allahuma Lebeyk," (i.e. Here we are, at
thy commands, O God!) During the wavings of the ihrams, the side of the
mountain, thickly crowded as it was by the people in their white
garments, had the appearance, of a cataract of water; while the green
umbrellas, with which several thousand hadjys, sitting on their camels
below, were provided, bore some resemblance to a verdant plain.
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