And Our Processions Round The Parish Preserve The Form Of
The Ancient Rites, Whose Life Is Long Since Fled.
Moslem moralists have
not failed to draw spiritual food from this mass of materialism.
“To
circuit the Bayt Ullah,” said the Pir Raukhan (As. Soc. vol. xi. and
Dabistan, vol. iii., “Miyan Bayazid”), “and to be free from wickedness, and
crime, and quarrels, is the duty enjoined by religion. But to circuit
the house of the friend of Allah (i.e. the heart), to combat bodily
propensities, and to worship the Angels, is the business of the
(mystic) path.” Thus Sa’adi, in his sermons,—which remind the Englishman of
“poor Yorick,”—“He who travels to the Ka’abah on foot makes a circuit of the
Ka’abah, but he who performs the pilgrimage of the Ka’abah in his heart is
encircled by the Ka’abah.” And the greatest Moslem divines sanction this
visible representation of an invisible and heavenly shrine, by
declaring that, without a material medium, it is impossible for man to
worship the Eternal Spirit.
[FN#7] The Mutawwif, or Dalil, is the guide at Meccah.
[FN#8] In A.D. 1674 some wretch smeared the Black Stone with impurity,
and every one who kissed it retired with a sullied beard. The Persians,
says Burckhardt, were suspected of this sacrilege, and now their
ill-fame has spread far; at Alexandria they were described to me as a
people who defile the Ka’abah. It is scarcely necessary to say that a
Shi’ah, as well as a Sunni, would look upon such an action with lively
horror. The people of Meccah, however, like the Madani, have turned the
circumstance to their own advantage, and make an occasional “avanie.” Thus,
nine or ten years ago, on the testimony of a boy who swore that he saw
the inside of the Ka’abah defiled by a Persian, they rose up, cruelly
beat the schismatics, and carried them off to their peculiar quarter
the Shamiyah, forbidding their ingress to the Ka’abah. Indeed, till
Mohammed Ali’s time, the Persians rarely ventured upon a pilgrimage, and
even now that man is happy who gets over it without a beating. The
defilement of the Black Stone was probably the work of some Jew or
Greek, who risked his life to gratify a furious bigotry.
[FN#9] Prayer is granted at fourteen places besides Al-Multazem, viz.:—
1. At the place of circumambulation.
2. Under the Mizab, or spout of the Ka’abah.
3. Inside the Ka’abah.
4. At the well Zemzem.
5. Behind Abraham’s place of prayer.
6 and 7. On Mounts Safa and Marwah.
8. During the ceremony called “Al-Sai.”
9. Upon Mount Arafat.
10. At Muzdalifah.
11. In Muna.
12. During the devil-stoning.
13. On first seeing the Ka’abah.
14. At the Hatim or Hijr.
[FN#10] The former is the 109th, the latter the 112th chapter of the
Koran (I have translated it in a previous volume).
[FN#11] These superstitions, I must remark, belong only to the vulgar.
[FN#12] Strictly speaking we ought, after this, to have performed the
ceremony called Al-Sai, or the running seven times between Mounts Safa
and Marwah.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 118 of 331
Words from 60952 to 61493
of 175520
