The Houses Cluster In Amphitheatre Shape Above It, And From The Masa’A, Or Street Below, A Short Flight Of Steps To A Platform, Bounded On Three Sides Like A Tennis-Court, By Tall Walls Without Arches.

The

[P.246] street, seen from above, has a bowstring curve: it is between eight and nine hundred feet long,[FN#33] with high houses on both sides, and small lanes branching off from it. At the foot of the platform we brought “right shoulders forward,” so as to face the Ka’abah, and raising hands to ears, thrice exclaimed, “Allaho Akbar.” This concluded the first course, and, of these, seven compose the ceremony Al-Sai, or the running. There was a startling contrast with the origin of this ceremony,—

“When the poor outcast on the cheerless wild, Arabia’s parent, clasped her fainting child,”—

as the Turkish infantry marched, in European dress, with sloped arms, down the Masa’a to relieve guard. By the side of the half-naked, running Badawin, they look as if Epochs, disconnected by long centuries, had met. A laxity, too, there was in the frequent appearance of dogs upon this holy and most memorial ground, which said little in favour of the religious strictness of the administration.[FN#34]

Our Sai ended at Mount Marwah. There we dismounted, and sat outside a barber’s shop, on the right-hand of the street. He operated upon our heads, causing us to repeat, “O Allah, this my Forelock is in Thy Hand, then grant me for every Hair a light on the Resurrection-day, O Most Merciful of the Merciful!” This, and the paying for it, constituted the fourth portion of the Umrah, or Little Pilgrimage. Throwing the skirts of our garments over our heads, to show that our “Ihram” was now exchanged for the normal state, “Ihlal,” we cantered to the Harim, prayed there a two-bow prayer, and returned home not a little fatigued.

[FN#1] Not more than one-quarter of the pilgrims who appear at Arafat go on to Al-Madinah: the expense, the hardships, and the dangers of the journey account for the smallness of the number. In theology it is “Jaiz,” or admissible, to begin with the Prophet’s place of burial. But those performing the “Hajjat al-Islam” are enjoined to commence at Meccah. [FN#2] When respectable married men live together in the same house, a rare occurrence, except on journeys, this most ungallant practice of clearing the way is and must be kept up in the East. [FN#3] I offer no lengthened description of the town of Meccah: Ali Bey and Burckhardt have already said all that requires saying. Although the origin of the Bayt Ullah be lost in the glooms of past time, the city is a comparatively modern place, built about A.D. 450, by Kusay and the Kuraysh. It contains about 30,000 to 45,000 inhabitants, with lodging room for at least treble that number; and the material of the houses is brick, granite, and sandstone from the neighbouring hills.

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