Of The Pilgrimage Ceremonies I Cannot Speak Harshly.

It may be true that “the rites of the Ka’abah, emasculated of every idolatrous tendency, still hang a

Strange unmeaning shroud around the living theism of Islam.” But what nation, either in the West or in the East, has been able to cast out from its ceremonies every suspicion of its old idolatry? What are the English mistletoe, the Irish wake, the Pardon of Brittany, the Carnival, and the Worship at Iserna? Better far to consider the Meccan pilgrimage rites in the light of Evil-worship turned into lessons of Good than to philosophize about their strangeness, and to blunder in asserting them to be insignificant. Even the Badawi circumambulating the Ka’abah fortifies his wild belief by the fond thought that he treads the path of “Allah’s friend.”

At Arafat the good Moslem worships in imitation of

[p.238] the “Pure of Allah[FN#15]”; and when hurling stones and curses at three senseless little buttresses which commemorate the appearance of the fiend, the materialism of the action gives to its sentiment all the strength and endurance of reality. The supernatural agencies of pilgrimage are carefully and sparingly distributed. The angels who restore the stones from Muna to Muzdalifah; the heavenly host whose pinions cause the Ka’abah’s veil to rise and to wave, and the mysterious complement of the pilgrim’s total at the Arafat sermon, all belong to the category of spiritual creatures walking earth unseen,—a poetical tenet, not condemned by Christianity. The Meccans are, it is true, to be reproached with their open Mammon-worship, at times and at places the most sacred and venerable; but this has no other effect upon the pilgrims than to excite disgust and open reprehension. Here, however, we see no such silly frauds as heavenly fire drawn from a phosphor-match; nor do two rival churches fight in the flesh with teeth and nails, requiring the contemptuous interference of an infidel power to keep around order. Here we see no fair dames staring with their glasses, braques at the Head of the Church; or supporting exhausted nature with the furtive sandwich; or carrying pampered curs who, too often, will not be silent; or scrambling and squeezing to hear theatrical music, reckless of the fate of the old lady who—on such occasions there is always one—has been “thrown down and cruelly trampled upon by the crowd.” If the Meccan citizens are disposed to scoff at the wild Takruri, they do it not so publicly or shamelessly as the Roman jeering with ribald jest at the fanaticism of strangers from the bogs of Ireland. Finally, at Meccah there is nothing theatrical, nothing that suggests the opera; but all is simple and impressive, filling the mind with

“A weight of awe not easy to be borne,”

and tending, I believe, after its fashion, to good.

[p.239] As regards the Meccan and Moslem belief that Abraham and his son built the Ka’abah, it may be observed the Genesitic account of the Great Patriarch has suggested to learned men the idea of two Abrahams, one the son of Terah, another the son of Azar (fire), a Prometheus who imported civilisation and knowledge into Arabia from Harran, the sacred centre of Sabaean learning.[FN#16] Moslem historians all agree in representing Abraham as a star-worshipper in youth, and Eusebius calls the patriarch son of Athar; his father’s name, therefore, is no Arab invention.

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