I May Truly Say That, Of All The Worshippers Who Clung Weeping To The Curtain, Or Who Pressed Their Beating Hearts To The Stone, None Felt For The Moment A Deeper Emotion Than Did The Haji From The Far-North.

It was as if the poetical legends of the Arab spoke truth, and that the waving wings of angels, not the sweet breeze of morning, were agitating and swelling the black covering of the shrine.

But, to confess humbling truth, theirs was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, mine was the ecstasy of gratified pride.

Few Moslems contemplate for the first time the Ka’abah, without fear and awe: there is a popular jest against new comers, that they generally inquire the direction of prayer. This being the Kiblah, or fronting place, Moslems pray all around it; a circumstance which of course cannot take place in any spot of Al-Islam but the Harim. The boy Mohammed, therefore, left me for a few minutes to myself; but presently he warned me that it was time to begin. Advancing, we entered through the Bab Benu Shaybah, the “Gate of the Sons of the Shaybah[FN#5]” (old woman). There we raised our

[p.162] hands, repeated the Labbayk, the Takbir, and the Tahlil; after which we uttered certain supplications, and drew our hands down our faces. Then we proceeded to the Shafe’is’ place of worship—the open pavement between the Makam Ibrahim and the well Zemzem—where we performed the usual two-bow prayer in honour of the Mosque. This was followed by a cup of holy water and a present to the Sakkas, or carriers, who for the consideration distributed, in my name, a large earthen vaseful to poor pilgrims.

The word Zemzem has a doubtful origin. Some derive it from the Zam Zam, or murmuring of its waters, others from Zam! Zam! (fill! fill! i.e. the bottle), Hagar’s impatient exclamation when she saw the stream. Sale translates it stay! stay! and says that Hagar called out in the Egyptian language, to prevent her son wandering. The Hukama, or Rationalists of Al-Islam, who invariably connect their faith with the worship of Venus, especially, and the heavenly bodies generally, derive Zemzem from the Persian, and make it signify the “great luminary.” Hence they say the Zemzem, as well as the Ka’abah, denoting the Cuthite or Ammonian worship of sun and fire, deserves man’s reverence. So the Persian poet Khakani addresses these two buildings:—

“O Ka’abah, thou traveller of the heavens!” “O Venus, thou fire of the world!”

Thus Wahid Mohammed, founder of the Wahidiyah sect, identifies the Kiblah and the sun; wherefore he says the door fronts the East. By the names Yaman (“right-hand”), Sham (“left-hand”), Kubul, or the East wind (“fronting”), and Dubur, or the West wind (“from the back”), it is evident that worshippers fronted the rising sun. According to the Hukama, the original Black Stone represents Venus, “which in the border of the heavens is a star of the planets,” and symbolical of the

[p.163] generative power of nature, “by whose passive energy the universe was warmed into life and motion.” The Hindus accuse the Moslems of adoring the Bayt Ullah.

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