At Any Rate
I Had The Certainty Of Seeing The Strange Wild Country Of The Hijaz,
And Of Being Present At The Ceremonies Of The Holy City.
I must request
the reader to bear with a Visitation once more:
We shall conclude it
with a ride to Al-Bakia.[FN#6] This venerable spot is frequented by the
pious every day after the prayer at the Prophet’s Tomb, and especially on
Fridays.
Our party started one morning,—on donkeys, as usual, for my foot was not
yet strong,—along the Darb al-Janazah round the Southern wall of the
town. The locomotion was decidedly slow, principally in consequence of
the tent-ropes which the Hajis had pinned down literally all over the
plain, and falls were by no means unfrequent. At last we arrived at the
end of the Darb, where I committed myself by mistaking the decaying
place of those miserable schismatics the Nakhawilah[FN#7] for Al-Bakia,
the glorious cemetery of the Saints. Hamid corrected my blunder with
tartness, to which I replied as tartly, that in our country—Afghanistan—we
burned the body of every heretic upon whom we could lay our hands. This
truly Islamitic custom was heard with general applause, and as the
little dispute ended, we stood at the open gate of Al-Bakia. Then
having dismounted I sat down on a low Dakkah or stone bench within the
walls, to obtain a general view and to prepare for the most fatiguing
of the Visitations.
There is a tradition that seventy thousand, or according to others a
hundred thousand saints, all with faces like full moons, shall cleave
on the last day the yawning bosom
[p.32] of Al-Bakia.[FN#8] About ten thousand of the Ashab (Companions
of the Prophet) and innumerable Sadat are here buried: their graves are
forgotten, because, in the olden time, tombstones were not placed over
the last resting-places of mankind. The first of flesh who shall arise
is Mohammed, the second Abu Bakr, the third Omar, then the people of
Al-Bakia (amongst whom is Osman, the fourth Caliph), and then the
incol[ae] of the Jannat al-Ma’ala, the Meccan cemetery. The Hadis, “whoever
dies at the two Harims shall rise with the Sure on the Day of judgment,”
has made these spots priceless in value. And even upon earth they might
be made a mine of wealth. Like the catacombs at Rome, Al-Bakia is
literally full of the odour of sanctity, and a single item of the great
aggregate here would render any other Moslem town famous. It is a pity
that this people refuses to exhume its relics.
The first person buried in Al-Bakia was Osman bin Maz’un, the first of
the Muhajirs, who died at Al-Madinah. In the month of Sha’aban, A.H. 3,
the Prophet kissed the forehead of the corpse and ordered it to be
interred within sight of his abode.[FN#9] In those days the field was
covered with the tree Gharkad; the vegetation was cut down, the ground
was levelled, and Osman was placed in the centre of the new cemetery.
With his own hands Mohammed planted two large upright stones at the
head and the feet of his faithful follower[FN#10]; and in process of
time a dome covered the spot.
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