Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah Volume I Part 27

[FN#65] Or more correctly, "There is no Ilah but Allah," that is, "There is no G.o.d but the G.o.d."

[FN#66] Some Zairs, after praying at the Caliph Osman's niche, leave the Mosque, especially when the "Jama'at," or public worship, is not being performed in the Rauzah. Others, as we did, pray alone in the Garden, and many authors prefer this conclusion to Visitation, for the reason above given.

[FN#67] This has become a generic name for a Well situated within the walls of a Mosque.

[FN#68] As might be expected, the more a man pays, the higher he estimates his own dignity. Some Indians have spent as much as 500 dollars during a first visit. Others have "made Maulids," i.e., feasted all the poor connected with the temple with rice, meat, &c., whilst others brought rare and expensive presents for the officials. Such generosity, however, is becoming rare in these unworthy days.

[FN#69] This gate was anciently called the Bab al-Atakah, "of Deliverance."

[FN#70] Most of these entrances have been named and renamed. The Bab Jibrail, for instance, which derives its present appellation from the general belief that the archangel once pa.s.sed through it, is generally called in books Bab al-Jabr, the Gate of Repairing (the broken fortunes of a friend or follower). It must not be confounded with the Mahbat Jibrail, or the window near it in the Eastern wall, where the archangel usually descended from heaven with the Wahy or Inspiration.

[FN#71] By some wonderful process the "Printer's Devil" converted, in the first edition, this "ball or cone" into "bull or cow."

[FN#72] Belal, the loud-lunged crier, stood, we are informed, by Moslem historians, upon a part of the roof on one of the walls of the Mosque.

The minaret, as the next chapter will show, was the invention of a more tasteful age.

[FN#73] This abomination may be seen in Egypt on many of the tombs,-those outside the Bal al-Nasr at Cairo, for instance.

[FN#74] The tale of this Weeping Pillar is well known. Some suppose it to have been buried beneath the pulpit: others-they are few in number-declare that it was inserted in the body of the pulpit.

[FN#75] The little domed building which figures in the native sketches, and in all our prints of the Al-Madinah Mosque, was taken down three or four years ago. It occupied part of the centre of the square, and was called Kubbat al-Zayt-Dome of Oil; or Kubbat al-Shama-Dome of Candles,-from its use as a store-room for lamps and wax candles.

[FN#76] This is its name among the illiterate, who firmly believe the palms to be descendants of trees planted there by the hands of the Prophet's daughter. As far as I could discover, the tradition has no foundation, and in old times there was no garden in the hypaethral court. The vulgar are in the habit of eating a certain kind of date, "Al-Sayhani," in the Mosque, and of throwing the stones about; this practice is violently denounced by the Olema.

[FN#77] Rhamnus Nabeca, Forsk. The fruit, called Nabak, is eaten, and the leaves are used for the purpose of washing dead bodies. The visitor is not forbidden to take fruit or water as presents from Al-Madinah, but it is unlawful for him to carry away earth, or stones, or cakes of dust, made for sale to the ignorant.

[FN#78] The Arabs, who, like all Orientals, are exceedingly curious about water, take the trouble to weigh the produce of their wells; the lighter the water, the more digestible and wholesome it is considered.

[FN#79] The common phenomenon of rivers flowing underground in Arabia has, doubtless, suggested to the people these subterraneous pa.s.sages, with which they connect the most distant places. At Al-Madinah, amongst other tales of short cuts known only to certain Badawi families, a man told me of a shaft leading from his native city to Hazramaut: according to him, it existed in the times of the Prophet, and was a journey of only three days!

[FN#80] The Mosque Library is kept in large chests near the Bab al-Salam; the only MS. of any value here is a Koran written in the Sulsi hand. It is nearly four feet long, bound in a wooden cover, and padlocked, so as to require from the curious a "silver key."

[FN#81] So the peasants in Brittany believe that Napoleon the First is not yet dead; the Prussians expect Frederick the Second; the Swiss, William Tell; the older English, King Arthur; and certain modern fanatics look forward to the re-appearance of Joanna Southcote. Why multiply instances in so well known a branch of the history of popular superst.i.tions?

[FN#82] The Sunnat is the custom or practice of the Apostle, rigidly conformed to by every good and orthodox Moslem.

[FN#83] The reader will bear in mind that I am quoting from Burckhardt.

When in Al-Hijaz and at Cairo, I vainly endeavoured to buy a copy of Al-Samanhudi. One was shown to me at Al-Madinah; unhappily, it bore the word Wakf (bequeathed), and belonged to the Mosque. I was scarcely allowed time to read it. (See p. 102, ante.) [FN#84] In Moslem law, prophets, martyrs, and saints, are not supposed to be dead; their property, therefore, remains their own. The Olema have confounded themselves in the consideration of the prophetic state after death. Many declare that prophets live and pray for forty days in the tomb; at the expiration of which time, they are taken to the presence of their Maker, where they remain till the blast of Israfil's trumpet. The common belief, however, leaves the bodies in the graves, but no one would dare to a.s.sert that the holy ones are suffered to undergo corruption. On the contrary, their faces are blooming, their eyes bright, and blood would issue from their bodies if wounded.

Al-Islam, as will afterwards appear, abounds in traditions of the ancient tombs of saints and martyrs, when accidentally opened, exposing to view corpses apparently freshly buried. And it has come to pa.s.s that this fact, the result of sanct.i.ty, has now become an unerring indication of it. A remarkable case in point is that of the late Sharif Ghalib, the father of the present Prince of Meccah. In his lifetime he was reviled as a wicked tyrant. But some years after his death, his body was found undecomposed; he then became a saint, and men now pray at his tomb. Perhaps his tyranny was no drawback to his holy reputation. La Brinvilliers was declared after execution, by her confessor and the people generally, a saint;-simply, I presume, because of the enormity of her crimes.

[FN#85] NOTE TO THIRD EDITION.-I have lately been a.s.sured by Mohammed al-Halabi, Shaykh al-Olema of Damascus, that he was permitted by the Aghawat to pa.s.s through the gold-plated door leading into the Hujrah, and that he saw no trace of a sepulchre.

[FN#86] I was careful to make a ground-plan of the Prophet's Mosque, as Burckhardt was prevented by severe illness from so doing. It will give the reader a fair idea of the main point, though, in certain minor details, it is not to be trusted. Some of my papers and sketches, which by precaution I had placed among my medicines, after cutting them into squares, numbering them, and rolling them carefully up, were damaged by the breaking of a bottle. The plan of Al-Madinah is slightly altered from Burckhardt's. Nothing can be more ludicrous than the views of the Holy City, as printed in our popular works. They are of the style "bird's-eye," and present a curious perspective. They despise distance like the Chinese,-pictorially audacious; the Harrah, or ridge in the foreground appears to be 200 yards, instead of three or four miles, distant from the town. They strip the place of its suburb Al-Manakhah, in order to show the enceinte, omit the fort, and the gardens north and south of the city, enlarge the Mosque twenty-fold for dignity, and make it occupy the whole centre of the city, instead of a small corner in the south-east quarter. They place, for symmetry, towers only at the angles of the walls, instead of all along the curtain, and gather up and press into the same field all the venerable and interesting features of the country, those behind the artist's back, and at his sides, as well as what appears in front. Such are the Turkish lithographs. At Meccah, some Indians support themselves by depicting the holy shrines; their works are a truly Oriental mixture of ground plan and elevation, drawn with pen and ink, and brightened with the most vivid colours-grotesque enough, but less unintelligible than the more ambitious imitations of European art.

[p.343]CHAPTER XVII.

AN ESSAY TOWARDS THE HISTORY OF THE PROPHET'S MOSQUE.

IBN ABBAS has informed the world that when the eighty individuals composing Noah's family issued from the ark, they settled at a place distant ten marches and twelve parasangs[FN#1] (thirty-six to forty-eight miles) from Babel or Babylon. There they increased and multiplied, and spread into a mighty empire. At length under the rule of Namrud (Nimrod), son of Kanaan (Canaan), son of Ham, they lapsed from the worship of the true G.o.d: a miracle dispersed them into distant parts of the earth, and they were further broken up by the one primaeval language being divided into seventy-two dialects.

A tribe called Aulad Sam bin Nuh (the children of Shem), or Amalikah and Amalik,[FN#2] from their ancestor Amlak bin Arfakhshad bin Sam bin Nuh, was inspired

[p.344]with a knowledge of the Arabic tongue[FN#3]: it settled at Al-Madinah, and was the first to cultivate the ground and to plant palm-trees. In course of time these people extended over the whole tract between the seas of Al-Hijaz (the Red Sea) and Al-Oman, (north-western part of the Indian Ocean), and they became the progenitors of the Jababirah[FN#4] (tyrants or "giants") of Syria, as well as the Farainah (Pharaohs) of Egypt.[FN#5] Under these Amalik such

[p.345]was the age of man that during the s.p.a.ce of four hundred years a bier would not be seen, nor "keening" be heard, in their cities.

The last king of the Amalik, "Arkam bin al-Arkam,[FN#6]" was, according to most authors, slain by an army of the children of Israel sent by Moses after the Exodus,[FN#7] with orders thoroughly to purge Meccah and Al-Madinah of their Infidel inhabitants. All the tribe was destroyed, with the exception of the women, the children, and a youth of the royal family, whose extraordinary beauty persuaded the invaders to spare him pending a reference to the Prophet. When the army returned, they found that Moses had died during the expedition, and they were received with reproaches by the people for having violated his express command. The soldiers, unwilling to live with their own nation under this reproach, returned to Al-Hijaz, and settled there.

Moslem authors are agreed that after the Amalik the Benu Israel ruled in the Holy Land of Arabia, but the learned in history are not agreed upon the cause of their emigration. According to some, when Moses was returning from a pilgrimage to Meccah, a mult.i.tude of his followers, seeing in Al-Madinah the signs of the city which, according to the Taurat, or Pentateuch, should hear the preaching of the last Prophet, settled there, and were joined by many Badawin of the neighbourhood who

[p.346]conformed to the law of Moses. Ibn Shaybah also informs us that when Moses and Aaron were wending northwards from Meccah, they, being in fear of certain Jews settled at Al-Madinah, did not enter the city,[FN#8] but pitched their tents on Mount Ohod. Aaron being about to die, Moses dug his tomb, and said, "Brother, thine hour is come! turn thy face to the next world!" Aaron entered the grave, lay at full length, and immediately expired; upon which the Jewish lawgiver covered him with earth, and went his way towards the Promised Land.[FN#9]

Abu Hurayrah a.s.serted that the Benu Israel, after long searching, settled in Al-Madinah, because, when driven from Palestine by the invasion of Bukht al-Nasr (Nebuchadnezzar), they found in their books that the last Prophet would manifest himself in a town of the towns of Arabiyah,[FN#10] called Zat Nakhl, or the "Place of Palm trees." Some of the sons of Aaron occupied the city; other tribes settled at Khaybar,[FN#11] and in the neighbourhood,

[p.347]building "Utum," or square, flat-roofed, stone castles for habitation and defence. They left an order to their descendants that Mohammed should be favourably received, but Allah hardened their hearts unto their own destruction. Like a.s.ses they turned their backs upon Allah's mercy,[FN#12] and the consequence is, that they have been rooted out of the land.

The Tarikh Tabari declares that when Bukht al-Nasr,[FN#13] after destroying Jerusalem, attacked and slew the king of Egypt, who had given an asylum to a remnant of the house of Israel, the persecuted fugitives made their way into Al-Hijaz, settled near Yasrib (Al-Madinah), where they founded several towns, Khaybar, Fadak, Wady al-Subu, Wady al-Kura, Kurayzah, and many others. It appears, then, by the concurrence of historians, that the Jews at an early time either colonised, or supplanted the Amalik at, Al-Madinah.

At length the Israelites fell away from the worship of the one G.o.d, who raised up against them the Arab tribes of Aus and Khazraj, the progenitors of modern Ansar. Both these tribes claimed a kindred origin, and

[p.348]Al-Yaman as the land of their nativity. The circ.u.mstances of their emigration are thus described. The descendants of Yarab bin Kahtan bin Shalik bin Arkfakhshad bin Sam bin Nuh, kinsmen to the Amalik, inhabited in prosperity the land of Saba.[FN#14] Their sway extended two months' journey from the d.y.k.e of Mareb,[FN#15] near the modern capital of Al-Yaman, as far as Syria, and incredible tales are told of their hospitality and of the fertility of their land. As usual, their hearts were perverted by prosperity. They begged Allah to relieve them from the troubles of extended empire and the duties of hospitality by diminishing their possessions. The consequence of their impious supplications was the well-known Flood of Iram.

The chief of the descendants of Kahtan bin Saba, one of the ruling families in Al-Yaman, was one Amru bin Amin Ma al-Sama,[FN#16] called "Al-Muzaykayh" from his rending in pieces every garment once worn. His wife Tarikah Himyariah, being skilled in divination, foresaw the fatal event, and warned her husband, who, unwilling to break from his tribe without an excuse, contrived the following stratagem. He privily ordered his adopted son, an orphan

[p.349]to dispute with him, and to strike him in the face at a feast composed of the princ.i.p.al persons in the kingdom. The disgrace of such a scene afforded him a pretext for selling off his property, and, followed by his thirteen sons,-all borne to him by his wife Tarikah,-and others of the tribe, Amru emigrated Northwards. The little party, thus preserved from the Yamanian Deluge, was destined by Allah to become the forefathers of the Auxiliaries of his chosen Apostle.

All the children of Amru thus dispersed into different parts of Arabia.

His eldest son, Salabah bin Amru, chose Al-Hijaz, settled at Al-Madinah, then in the hands of the impious Benu Israel, and became the father of the Aus and Khazraj. In course of time, the new comers were made by Allah an instrument of vengeance against the disobedient Jews. Of the latter people, the two tribes Kurayzah and n.a.z.ir claimed certain feudal rights (well known to Europe) upon all occasions of Arab marriages. The Aus and the Khazraj, after enduring this indignity for a time, at length had recourse to one of their kinsmen who, when the family dispersed, had settled in Syria. Abu Jubaylah, thus summoned, marched an army to Al-Madinah, avenged the honour of his blood, and destroyed the power of the Jews, who from that moment became Mawali, or clients to the Arabs.

For a time the tribes of Aus and Khazraj, freed from the common enemy, lived in peace and harmony. At last they fell into feuds and fought with fratricidal strife, until the coming of the Prophet effected a reconciliation between them. This did not take place, however, before the Khazraj received, at the battle of Buas (about A.D. 615), a decided defeat from the Aus.

It is also related, to prove how Al-Madinah was predestined to a high fate, that nearly three centuries before the siege of the town by Abu Jubaylah, the Tobba

[p.350]al-Asghar[FN#17] marched Northward, at the requisition of the Aus and Khazraj tribes, in order to punish the Jews; or, according to others, at the request of the Jews to revenge them upon the Aus and Khazraj. After capturing the town, he left one of his sons to govern it, and marched onwards to conquer Syria and Al-Irak.

Suddenly informed that the people of Al-Madinah had treacherously murdered their new prince, the exasperated Tobba returned and attacked the place; and, when his horse was killed under him, he swore that he would never decamp before razing it to the ground. Whereupon two Jewish priests, Ka'ab and a.s.sayd, went over to him and informed him that it was not in the power of man to destroy the town, it being preserved by Allah, as their books proved, for the refuge of His Prophet, the descendant of Ishmael.[FN#18]

The Tobba Judaized. Taking four hundred of the priests with him, he departed from Al-Madinah, performed pilgrimage to the Ka'abah of Meccah, which he invested with a splendid covering[FN#19]; and, after erecting a house

[p.351]for the expected Prophet, he returned to his capital in Al-Yaman, where he abolished idolatry by the ordeal of fire. He treated his priestly guests with particular attention, and on his death-bed he wrote the following tetrastich:-

"I testify of Ahmad that he of a truth "Is a prophet from Allah, the Maker of souls.

Be my age extended into his age, I would be to him a Wazir and a cousin."

Then sealing the paper he committed it to the charge of the High Priest, with a solemn injunction to deliver the letter, should an opportunity offer, into the hands of the great Prophet; and that, if the day be distant, the missive should be handed down from generation to generation till it reached the person to whom it was addressed. The house founded by him at Al-Madinah was committed to a priest of whose descendants was Abu Ayyub the Ansari, the first person over whose threshold the Apostle pa.s.sed when he ended the Flight. Abu Ayyub had also charge of the Tobba's letter, so that after three or four centuries, it arrived at its destination.

Al-Madinah was ever well inclined to Mohammed. In[FN#20]

[p.352]the early part of his career, the emissaries of a tribe called the Benu Abd al-Ashhal came from that town to Meccah, in order to make a treaty with the Kuraysh, and the Apostle seized the opportunity of preaching Al-Islam to them. His words were seconded by Ayyas bin Ma'az, a youth of the tribe, and opposed by the chiefs of the emba.s.sy; who, however, returned home without pledging themselves to either party.[FN#21] Shortly afterwards a body of the Aus and the Khazraj came to the pilgrimage of Meccah: when Mohammed began preaching to them, they recognised the person so long expected by the Jews, and swore to him an oath which is called in Moslem history the "First Fealty of the Steep.[FN#22]"

After the six individuals who had thus pledged themselves returned to their native city, the event being duly bruited abroad caused such an effect that, when the next pilgrimage season came, twelve, or according to others forty persons, led by As'ad bin Zara[r]ah, accompanied the original converts, and in the same place swore the "Second Fealty of the Steep." The Prophet dismissed them in company with one Musab bin Umayr, a Meccan, charged to teach them the Koran and their religious duties, which in those times consisted only of prayer and the Profession of Unity. They arrived at Al-Madinah on a Friday, and this was the first day on which the city witnessed the public devotions of the Moslems.

After some persecutions, Musab had the fortune to convert a cousin of As'ad bin Zararah, a chief of the Aus, Sa'ad bin Ma'az, whose opposition had been of the fiercest. He persuaded his tribe, the Benu Abd al-Ashhal, to break

[p.353]their idols and openly to profess Al-Islam. The next season, Musab having made many converts, some say seventy, others three hundred, marched from Al-Madinah to Meccah for their pilgrimage; and there induced his followers to meet the Prophet at midnight upon the Steep near Muna. Mohammed preached to them their duties towards Allah and himself, especially insisting upon the necessity of warring down infidelity. They pleaded ancient treaties with the Jews of Al-Madinah, and showed apprehension lest the Apostle, after bringing them into disgrace with their fellows, should desert them and return to the faith of his kinsmen, the Kuraysh. Mohammed, smiling, comforted them with the a.s.surance that he was with them, body and soul, for ever. Upon this they asked him what would be their reward if slain. He replied, "Gardens 'neath which the streams flow,"-that is to say, Paradise.

Then, in spite of the advice of Al-Abbas, Mohammed's uncle, who was loud in his denunciations, they bade the Preacher stretch out his hand, and upon it swore the oath known as the "Great Fealty of the Steep."

After comforting them with an Ayat, or Koranic verse, which promised heaven, the Apostle divided his followers into twelve bodies; and placing a chief at the head of each,[FN#23] dismissed them to their homes. He rejected the offer made by one of the party-namely, to slay all the idolaters present at the pilgrimage-saying that Allah had favoured him with no such order. For the same reason he refused their invitation to visit Al-Madinah, which was the princ.i.p.al object of their mission; and he then took an affectionate leave of them.

[p.354]Two months and a half after the events above detailed, Mohammed received the inspired tidings that Al-Madinah of the Hijaz was his predestined asylum. In antic.i.p.ation of the order, for as yet the time had not been revealed, he sent forward his friends, among whom were Omar, Talhah, and Hamzah, retaining with him Abu Bakr[FN#24] and Ali.

The particulars of the Flight, that eventful accident to Al-Islam, are too well known to require mention here; besides which they belong rather to the category of general than of Madinite history.

Mohammed was escorted into Al-Madinah by one Buraydat al-Aslami and eighty men of the same tribe, who had been offered by the Kuraysh a hundred camels for the capture of the fugitives. But Buraydat, after listening to their terms, accidentally entered into conversation with Mohammed; and no sooner did he hear the name of his interlocutor, than he professed the faith of Al-Islam. He then prepared for the Apostle a standard by attaching his turband to a spear, and anxiously inquired what house was to be honoured by the presence of Allah's chosen servant. "Whichever," replied Mohammed, "this she-camel[FN#25] is ordered to show me." At the last

[p.355]halting-place, he accidentally met some of his disciples returning from a trading voyage to Syria; they dressed him and his companion Abu Bakr in white clothing which, it is said, caused the people of Kuba to pay a mistaken reverence to the latter. The Moslems of Al-Madinah were in the habit of repairing every morning to the heights near the city, looking out for the Apostle; and, when the sun waxed hot, they returned home. One day, about noon, a Jew, who discovered the retinue from afar, suddenly warned the nearest party of Ansar, or Auxiliaries of Al-Madinah, that the fugitive was come. They s.n.a.t.c.hed up their arms and hurried from their houses to meet him.

Mohammed's she-camel advanced to the centre of the then flourishing town of Kuba. There she suddenly knelt upon a place which is now consecrated ground; at that time it was an open s.p.a.ce, belonging, they say, to Abu Ayyub the Ansari, who had a house there near the abodes of the Benu Amr bin Auf. This event happened on the first day of the week, the twelfth of the month Rabia al-Awwal[FN#26] (June 28, A.D. 622), in the first year of the Flight: for which reason Monday, which also witnessed the birth, the mission, and the death of the Prophet, is an auspicious day to Al-Islam.

After halting two days in the house of Kulsum bin Hadmah at Kuba, and there laying the foundation of the