Ibn Jubayr
Spain
1183–84
The months of travel, thousands of miles, dozens of languages and regional cultures, that separate Khosraw’s Khurasan from Ibn Jubayr’s Granada should give any reader pause. By the time the following account was made, the contiguous sweep of Islamic lands encompassed capitals and trade routes from India to Morocco, including Iberia up to the Pyrennes.
Abu al-Husayn ibn Jubayr was born in Grenada, Spain, in 1145 and served as first secretary to its Muslim governor in the second half of the twelfth century. Like Naser-e Khosraw, Ibn Jubayr was a courtier, a scholar, and a poet, but when read in succession Khosraw’s work appears sketchy. Besides a vivid record of a pilgrimage performed during the Crusades, Ibn Jubayr supplies the prototype for the rihla, or traveler’s account, a popular literary form in the Arab Middle Ages. It has rightly been called the most elegant of the medieval Muslim travel books. In 1189, when it first appeared, Ibn Jubayr’s Grenada was emerging as a capital of Europe’s first Islamic region, Muslim Spain.
The origins of Muslim Spain reach back to the last years of the seventh century and to that part of the western Mediterranean where Europe and Africa almost meet. (See Fig. 8.) The Muslim invaders who drew up here from Syria, Arabia, and Egypt were diligent soldiers inspired by a powerful sense of manifest destiny. Running out of continent, they looked north. In 711, a Berber general in the service of Musa Ibn Nusayr, crossed over to Gibraltar at the head of a largely Moroccan Berber army. A decisive battle ensued, and the Arabs marched north to the Visigoths’ capital, Toledo. Two years later most of the Iberian Peninsula lay in their hands.
Ibn Jubayr’s family arrived from Mecca as part of an army dispatched by the Caliph of Damascus in 740. In southern Spain, known to them as Andalus, they came upon a Christian world with Roman roots—the birthplace of the emperors Hadrian and Trajan, the Stoic philosopher Seneca, and the poet Lucan. They found theaters, aqueducts, bridges, and a society governed by the Visigothic code. Upon these rich foundations, they installed the cultural hallmarks of the East: the “Moorish” arch from Sassanid Persia, the stylized and luminous art of Byzantium, the new science of Ptolemy’s school at Alexandria, and of course Islam. A day’s sail north of Morocco’s rocky coast, in the lush Mediterranean valleys of Andalusia, these settlers set off a fusion of civilizations that illuminated Europe for eight centuries.
At Córdoba, for example, beginning in 756, the first Amir, Abd al-Rahman I, extended along the river Guadalquivir a city whose plan, fortifications, palaces, and suburbs mirrored those of Damascus. The first palm tree in Spain grew in his courtyard. Abd al-Rahman did not come to Spain for the sunlight. He was driven out of Syria during the Abbasid revolution, fleeing the extermination of his family and the whole Umayyad court. A survivor of cross-tribal violence, Abd al-Rahman made a point of avoiding the same catastrophe in Spain. In this, he had the support of a school of Islam that encouraged religious and racial tolerance. Like the light of a dying star, the Umayyad tradition, extinguished in Damascus, continued to shed its rays on far-off Spain. Its open, pluralistic nature prompted Abd al-Rahman and his heirs to develop a highly civilized Muslim state. Assuming command of the region, he announced a plan to treat all its faiths and races impartially, each one according to its laws. In the next thirty years, he established justice in the markets and the courts, laying the groundwork for a centuries-long experiment in social toleration such as neither Europe nor the Middle East had ever seen. Convivencia, Spain’s golden age of tolerance, dates from Abd al-Rahman. Under its banner, Arab, Christian, and Jewish cultures flourished side by side for centuries. Before he died, in 788, Abd al-Rahman had subdued and organized a region stretching from Portugal to southern France. By helping the Basques chase Charlemagne over the Pyrenees, he also unwittingly supplied a plot line for France’s national epic, The Song of Roland.
During the next three centuries, a succession of talented rulers and their court philosophers, scholars, poets, architects, inventors, and musicians set the cultural standards for their age. By Ibn Jubayr’s day, Seville boasted five hundred public baths and a thousand mosques, and Córdoba was western Europe’s largest city, with a population of seven hundred thousand, where Muslim and Jewish scholars taught side by side in tax-supported universities. It is rare when we can pinpoint where one civilization went on to learn from another, but Muslim Spain provides a clear-cut case. It became the site for the most prolonged and intimate encounter in Europe among Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the explosion of philosophical thought triggered during this period, most of the “lost” works of Aristotle, Plato, Hippocrates, Galen, Ptolemy, and Euclid were reintroduced into Europe through Arabic translations and the commentaries of Muslim philosophers and scholars. The full extent of this wealth of translations may never be uncovered, but on two points modern scholarship agrees: the works revived in Muslim Spain fueled Europe’s renaissance, and the flow of information was all one way, from the libraries of Cairo and Baghdad to the libraries of Spain and thence toward the rest of Europe. Christian scholars traveled south in numbers. In the decade of Ibn Jubayr’s birth, at Toledo alone, the Englishman Robert of Ketton, the Italian Gerard of Cremona, and the Austrian Hermann of Carinthia could all be found actively translating hundreds of Greek classics from Arabic to Latin for European scholars. Meanwhile, Spain’s Muslim rulers scoured the Levant for more. Hakim II (reigned 961–976), to cite one example, employed spies in Egypt and Syria to alert him to the presence not of gold or of concubines but of rare books and new translations. His alabaster library in Córdoba held thousands of volumes.
This surge of cultural attention reached an apex around the time of Ibn Jubayr’s birth. His Iberian contemporaries include the iconoclastic Muslim mystic Ibn ‘Arabi of Ronda (1165–1240), the polymath Ibn Rushd of Seville (1126–1198, called Averroës in Europe), and Moses Maimonides of Córdoba (Musa ibn Maymun, 1135–1204). Maimonides’ early career as Judaism’s greatest medieval thinker demonstrates the extent to which a multicultural context flourished for centuries in Muslim Spain, benefiting not only Islam but other religions then under Muslim rule. Ibn Jubayr’s Granada was more civilized than most urban centers farther east. As his book makes plain, he was often shocked by the greed and inequity of Christian Europe and the Arabian Hijaz.
The following selections include Ibn Jubayr’s arrival in Egypt, his departure by a Red Sea ship for Arabia, and his stay in Jidda. They continue with excerpts from his eight-month stay at Mecca. He set out from Grenada in early February 1183. Traveling with one companion, a physician, he embarked on a Genoese ship at Ceuta and sailed with a Christian crew to Egypt. The passage, frequently stormy, took thirty days. Along the way, he appears to have been unnerved by more than weather. With a third crusade brewing in Palestine, prisoners were being sold into slavery on all sides. Within a few pages, while docked at Cape St. Mark in Sardinia, Ibn Jubayr records that he observed eighty Muslim captives standing for auction in the market. “The enemy,” he writes, “had just returned with them from the Muslim coast.” In Egypt, where our first excerpt begins, the fate of the contestants is reversed. Disembarking at Alexandria, Ibn Jubayr meets a camel train of Christian soldiers being led away to prison. Not just any soldiers, these were the troops of Reynald de Chatillon, a legendary figure in the Crusader annals who made a special practice of raiding Hajj caravans. This time, his men had been stopped a day’s march short of Medina by an army sent from Cairo. The prisoners met by Ibn Jubayr were captives from this failed expedition.
The European invasion of the Levant runs like a dark current through Ibn Jubaye’s pages. Performing the Hajj under such conditions would not be easy. For one thing, the principal trans-Sinai route from Egypt to Mecca ran right through Reynald’s raiding grounds. Sobered, Ibn Jubayr made for Cairo, now a Sunni capital where he found the famous Saladin in power. The consolidating genius of this new Kurdish sultan had already improved the pilgrims’ lot. Calling them sons and daughters of the road, he provided them food and abolished the city’s Hajj tax. The farther one moved from the capital, however, the more dangerous things became. If the Sinai route was impassable, the alternative—a nine-day southern march up the Nile to Qus in Upper Egypt, then overland across scorching sand to the Red Sea port of Aydhab—was not much safer. A year before, Crusaders had attacked a train of pilgrims outside Qus and slaughtered the lot of them. Ibn Jubayr saw no choice. He traveled south from Cairo in a camel caravan. Although he reached the coast alive, the port of Aydhab turned out to be a hellhole, and the Red Sea crossing to the Hijaz was horrendous.
Matters grew worse in Arabia. Indeed, the riskiest parts of Ibn Jubayr’s journey occurred in the Hijaz along the routes that linked the coast to Mecca and Medina. Since long before Islam was born, these ancient trails had bristled with fractious local tribes whose only wealth derived from raiding passing travelers. In the late twelfth century, the annual Syrian caravan ran a gauntlet of these rapacious clans, starting at the gates of Damascus and continuing almost unbroken right to Mecca—a distance of a thousand miles. The sanctity of pilgrimage was the last thing on the minds of these marauders. They viewed the untaxed Hajj caravans winding through their lands as an invitation to plunder, nothing more. As for pilgrims foolish enough to brave the Hijaz without protection, the usual method was to strip them bare and take their camels. We have already seen where this could lead, with Naser-e Khosraw.
Muslims have always viewed the Hajj as an opportunity for overcoming obstacles. Acceptance, forbearance, and vigilant efforts in behalf of fellow pilgrims bear a promise of spiritual rewards throughout the Hajj record. Yet even a man as devout as Ibn Jubayr could not mistake for God’s will the violence of these venal Hijazi raiders. Outraged by their methods, he recommends at one point that the whole region be “purified by the sword,” then concludes that the Hajj simply isn’t worth it, that those jurists were wise who released prospective pilgrims from the fulfillment of their duties in bad times. It is not surprising to read later that no caliph had risked his neck on the Hajj in four hundred years.
Once safely inside Mecca’s gates, however, Ibn Jubayr strikes a very different tone. A precinct exclusively governed by sacred law, the city appears like a corner of heaven on Earth, a peaceable kingdom steeped in spirituality and order, where every visitor takes to heart the proscriptions against partisan argument and any form of violence. The crowds do not push or shove; pilgrims at their rites respect one another. Canonical hours divide the day with calls to prayer, and the whole population takes up lives of customary action. This profound security of the Haram district is all the more arresting in contrast to the rest of the Hijaz. Even the markets flow with milk and honey, thanks to the charity of Yemeni Muslims, who sustain the town all year with free produce.
When Hajj-time finally comes around, Ibn Jubayr records it meticulously, not as an outside observer but as a participant with a sharp eye for details. He provides a vivid depiction of the Arafat encampments and proves a first-class pilgrim guide, giving his readers at home in Spain a real taste of the distant sacred rites. He is also the first Hajj author to note big improvements to the pilgrimage infrastructure, from its water system to the steps carved at great expense into Mount Mercy. Along the way, he conveys the feel of pedestrian travel as well as of the deluxe camel litters of the wealthy, in which passengers rode beneath protective canopies undisturbed by wind and sun, napping on mattresses, playing chess and reading.
Ibn Jubayr turned back toward Spain when the Hajj was over, traveling through Mesopotamia, Syria, and Sicily. He reached Grenada in April 1185, and his book appeared four years later. Organized in diary form yet carefully constructed, it divides into twenty-seven chapters, one for each month the author was away. Addressed to a community of believers, it is the work of a devout Muslim, complete with praise for God’s providence and theological shrugs when times grow tough. It is also shrewdly observant and candid in its views. Whereas Khosraw was laconic, Ibn Jubayr speaks his mind on every page. He is not always pleased, and he knows a good town when he sees one—qualities of first importance in all good travel writing. Nowhere in the Hajj literature are the security and spirit of the sacred Territory more vividly expressed.
from The Travels of Ibn Jubayr
EGYPT TO MECCA. APRIL–AUGUST 1183 The first thing we saw upon landing at Alexandria was a large crowd gathered along the road to watch a train of European prisoners being led through town on camelback. The captives rode backward, facing the camels’ tails, and a band of horns and cymbals played around them. We asked what had happened and were told a painful story. Earlier that year, a number of Syrian Crusaders had constructed sailing ships in a part of that country close to the Red Sea. From there they loaded the parts of the ships on camels hired out from local Arabs and had the ships transported to the water. There they nailed them together and launched them into the sea, to harass the pilgrims coming and going to Mecca. In the Yemen Sea they burned sixteen Muslim ships. Then they sailed on to Aydhab and attacked a boatload of pilgrims coming from Jidda. On the Egyptian side, they seized a large Hajj caravan traveling from Qus to Aydhab and killed everyone in it. Next they captured two vessels bringing merchandise from Yemen. Back on the Arabian side, all along the beaches, they burned down many revictualing stations providing food to God’s exalted cities, Mecca and Medina. These are unparalleled atrocities. No European had ever come so near the sacred sites. The most shocking outrage, however, was their aim to enter Medina, the City of the Prophet, and rob his tomb.
They made no secret of this plan, spreading word of it far and wide to frighten people, but Allah foiled their attempt. Less than a day’s ride from Medina, they were repelled by ships sent all the way from Cairo and Alexandria. The Chamberlain Husam al-Din Lu’lu’ and many brave sailors pursued the enemy into the hills and captured everyone. We saw in this a sign from God, for the ships from Egypt were a month and a half away when they set out, and they arrived at the last possible moment. All the invaders were either killed on the spot or captured and subsequently executed in many different countries as a warning. Some were sent to Mecca and Medina. Allah watches over Islam. Praise to the Lord of the Universe. . . .
THE RED SEA CROSSING The ships that ply the Red Sea from Aydhab to Jidda are sewn together without a single nail. They are bound by cord made from coconut fiber, which the builders pound until it takes the form of thread. . . . The ships are caulked with palm-tree shavings, and when the construction is finished, they smear it with grease, castor oil, or shark oil, the last of which is best. . . . They grease the boats to soften the shell and make it supple, protecting it against the inevitable contact with the reefs, which prevent nailed ships from making passage in these waters. The wood and the coconut fiber both come from India. The sails, amazingly, are woven from the leaves of a gum tree, but their sheets are weakly joined and poorly made. . . .
Our sea passage [from Aydhab to Jidda] on Tuesday and Wednesday took longer than usual, the winds being light. Then, after Thursday’s evening prayer, just as we saw the first birds from Arabia start to circle in the air, lightning bolts flashed off the mountains in the east and a rising storm darkened the skies, covering everything. The tempest raged, driving the ship off course and, finally, backward. The wind’s fury continued. The darkness grew thick and filled the air so that we couldn’t stay our course. Finally, a few stars reappeared to guide us. The sail was lowered to the bottom of the mast, and we passed the night in a storm that made us desperate. The Pharaoh’s Sea is famous for these rages, but in the morning God brought us relief. The wind fell, the clouds broke up, the sky grew clear. In the distance the lands of the Hijaz appeared before us. We could only make out the mountains east of Jidda. Our captain said they lay two days away. . . .
We sailed all day under a favorable light breeze, meeting many reefs along the way which broke the water and made it laugh around us. We entered these watery alleys with great care. The captain was skilled and artful, and God kept us off the reefs until we finally anchored at a small island near the coast, named the Obstacle of Ships. God saved us from its unpleasant name. We disembarked here and passed Friday night. The morning was calm, but the wind blew from an unsuitable direction, so there we remained through the day. On Saturday a slight breeze rose, and we sailed out quietly into a calm sea that resembled a dish of blue crystal. . . .
On Monday evening we anchored near Jidda. The city lay in plain view. The wind raged the following morning and prevented us from making port. The entry was made difficult by the presence of many reefs and winding shallows. We admired the dexterity with which these pilgrim captains and their sailors handled their ships among the reefs. It was truly marvelous. They would enter the narrow channels and make their way through them the way a horseman manages a mount that is light on the bit and docile.
At Jidda we lodged in the house of the Governor, Ali, who rules this port in the name of Saladin. Most of the houses here are made of reed. There are also inns of stone and mud with palm-frond lean-tos serving as upper chambers, beneath which people sleep at night to escape the heat. We stayed in one of these apartments on the rooftop. The many ancient remains in town attest to its great age. Traces of prehistoric walls still rise around it, and there is one place with an old and lofty dome which is said to mark the house of the prophet Eve, humanity’s mother, in the days when she was on her way to Mecca. Allah knows best in these matters.
Most of the people living in this town and in the desert and mountains around it are descendants of the Prophet, Ali [his cousin and son-in-law], Hasan, and Husayn [Ali’s sons] or they are descendants of Jafar—God keep their noble ancestors in his favor. The life of the Jiddans is heartbreaking. They support themselves in many ways, hiring out camels if they have them, selling milk or water, dates when they can find them, or driftwood, which they gather off the beaches. Sometimes their women, daughters of the Prophet, do these jobs, too. Beyond a doubt theirs is a family to which God has granted a future, not a present. . . .
The majority of these people are sectarians and schismatics divided into various doctrines. They have no real religion. They treat foreign pilgrims worse than they treat the Christians and Jews under their tribute, seizing most of the hajjis’ collective provisions, robbing them blind, and finding new ways to divest them of their goods. Pilgrims passing through their territories pay endless tolls and part constantly with food until they reach their homelands. Without Saladin’s efforts to improve conditions, the oppression of pilgrims in this region would be universal and unending. For Saladin lifted the pilgrim tax, sending money and goods to Mukthir, the Amir of Mecca. But when these payoffs are delayed even a little, the Amir goes back to intimidating pilgrims and jailing those who cannot pay the tax.
So it was when we arrived at Jidda and were arrested by Amir Mukthir. That year he had ordered the pilgrims to guarantee each other’s payment against the arrival of Saladin’s allocation; only then might we enter the Sacred Mosque at Mecca. Should the bribes arrive in time, all would go smoothly; otherwise, he would demand his tax from the pilgrims. So ran his speech, as if God’s Sacred City were an heirloom in his hand which he had a lawful right to lease to the hajjis. Glory to God, who has the power to alter laws.
Saladin had paid two thousand dinars and 2,002 irdabb23 of wheat, exclusive of the land rents in Upper Egypt and Yemen assigned to the Amir as a substitute for the tax. It should be said that had Saladin not been absent, fighting Crusaders in Syria, the Amir would not have dared act in this way.
The part of Islam that most deserves a cleansing by the sword is the Hijaz, both for flying in the face of faith and for robbing the pilgrims’ goods and shedding their blood. The Spanish judges who say that Muslims should be absolved of the pilgrim’s obligation speak rightly for this very reason. Anyone coming this way faces danger and oppression, though God intends something quite different for those who come to share this place. How can the House of God have fallen into the hands of people who use it illegally, as a source of income, making it a means of seizing property and of detaining pilgrims whom they humiliate and reduce to poverty? . . .
JIDDA TO MECCA On Tuesday evening, the second day of August, we left Jidda—only after the pilgrims had guaranteed each other’s tax and their names had been recorded in a book by the governor of Jidda. . . . We traveled all night and arrived at al-Qurayn as the sun was rising. This is a staging post and camp for pilgrims. Here they put on the ihram. If they rest through the day, as is the custom, leave at dusk, and travel throughout the night, in the morning they will reach the Sacred Mosque, God increase its honor. Returning hajjis rest at Qurayn, too. The place has a well of sweet spring water, so the pilgrims do not have to overburden themselves with water coming up through the mountains the night before. We rested there all Wednesday. When darkness fell, we left in our pilgrim clothes to perform the Umra [Lesser Pilgrimmage] and marched all night. A full moon threw its light over the earth, and the night raised its veil. Voices chanted “Here am I, Lord. Here am I” on every side, and the pilgrims prayed to Allah to grant their requests. Bride of all life’s nights, Time’s virgin maiden.
We reached the mosque at dawn, coming down the hill into town as the light spread, and saw before us the venerable Haram where Abraham stayed, the friend of God, and where he found the Kaʿba, the sacred House that is led like an unveiled bride to Paradise, surrounded by pilgrims, the envoys of God. We circled the Kaʿba to celebrate our arrival and then prayed at the Station of Abraham. We clung to the covering of the Kaʿba, on the wall between the Black Stone and the door, where prayers are answered. We went into the Zamzam pavilion and drank the water that in the Prophet’s words is good for every purpose.24 Then we performed the rite of saʿy, running between the hills of Safa and Marwa. After this we shaved our heads and, so, entered a state of purity. . . .
In Mecca we lodged at a house called Purity, near the Mosque’s al-Suddah Gate, in a room with many amenities, overlooking the Haram and the Kaʿba.
MECCA. THE MONTH OF JUMADA ‘L-ULA, AUGUST–SEPTEMBER 1183 This town and its people from very ancient times have profited from the prayers of Abraham, the friend of God, as it is written. . . . “Have we not established a safe sanctuary for [the believers] to which all kinds of products shall be carried.”25 The proof of this verse is obvious in Mecca, and will remain so until the Day of Judgment, for people’s hearts yearn toward it from distant places. The roads to it are a meeting place for those to whom Islam’s teachings have spread. Produce is brought here from everywhere, and in its fruits, goods, and commerce it is the most prosperous of regions. And although there is no substantial trade outside the pilgrim season, nevertheless, since people flock this way from the East and West, you can find sold here in a single day pearls, sapphires, and other precious stones, a great variety of perfumes, including musk, camphor, amber, and aloes, Indian medicines, and other goods from India and Ethiopia, products from the factories of Iraq and Yemen, merchandise from Khurasan, the goods of northwestern Africa, and many more goods too extensive to assess. . . .
As for . . . fruits, we had imagined that Spain was the most favored region in the world, and so it seemed until we came here and found it overflowing with good things, figs, grapes, pomegranates, quince, peaches, lemons, walnuts, palm fruit, watermelons, cucumbers, and other vegetables, like eggplant, pumpkin, carrot, cauliflower, and aromatic herbs. . . . The best of the fruits we tried were the watermelon and the quince. All the fruit here is good, but the watermelon is particularly fragrant. When someone approaches you with one of these, you smell the fruit before it reaches you, and the sweetness is such that you almost don’t need to eat it. When you do taste it, the sweetness is like candy or pure honey. The reader may think I exaggerate. Actually, it is better than I describe. As for honey, Mecca has a honey so fine it has passed into proverbs; they call it al-masʿudi. The various kinds of milk are of the first quality too, so that butter made from it can scarcely be distinguished from the honey. . . .
MECCA. THE MONTH OF RAJAB, OCTOBER 20, 1183 . . . The people of Mecca regard this month as a solemn occasion for pilgrims to meet each other. It is the occasion of a great local festival, one they have observed without a break since long before the days of the Prophet Muhammad. People perform the Umra during this month in numbers nearly equivalent to the Arafat vigil during the month of Hajj. Pilgrims from neighboring countries flock to Mecca for it. . . .
The events on the night of the new moon and the day after are almost impossible to describe. That afternoon the streets and alleys of Mecca were thronged with camels bearing small dome-shaped enclosures, or howdahs, roped onto their backs and covered with silk drapes and trappings of fine linen. The quality of the decorations varied according to the affluence of each owner, but everyone gave them all the care and attention in their power. They set out in great numbers for Tan’im, the ritual starting point for those making the Umra, so that the howdahs appeared to flow through the valleys and mountain tracks, the camels beneath them adorned with ornaments and moving toward the sacred places without drivers, in collars of silk and with beautiful trappings that sometimes dragged along the ground. There was no one in the city who did not perform the Umra that evening. Fires lined the roads on either side and lit torches preceded the howdahs of the Meccan women. When we had completed the rites, circled the Kaʿba seven times, and arrived at the concourse between the Safa and Marwa hills, we found the road completely lit with fires and lanterns, and thronged with men and women performing the rite on their camels. . . . This remarkable sight, the crowds of people dressed in pilgrim robes, crying out “Here I am, Lord, at your service. Here am I” and the mountains answering with echoes, made one imagine the gathering on the Day of Resurrection. People cried, tears flowed, hearts melted at this sight. . . .
On Friday the road was almost as jammed as the day before with horsemen and pedestrians, men and women walking along the blessed way in hope of a heavenly reward. Throughout all this, whenever men met, they shook hands, offering prayers and seeking God’s forgiveness on each other’s behalf, and the women did the same. Everyone wore their finest clothes, according to the fashion of their homeland and their tribe. The people of Mecca make elaborate preparations for this festival. They amass in great numbers, compete in the fineness of their appearance, and indulge in great ceremony. The markets are also very active at this time, and sales are brisk, so that the vendors often prepare for these few days months in advance. . . .
A tribe from Yemen, the Saru, make a tradition of arriving ten days before this festival begins, with a double purpose of performing the Umra, on the one hand, and of providing Mecca, on the other, with wheat, grains, kidney beans, and other coarser products, bringing butter, honey, raisins, almonds, condiments, and fruit. This year they arrived by the thousands, men and camels laden with goods, and bringing an abundance of supplies to the Blessed City and to the pilgrims who have settled here, to nourish and sustain them. Prices are lowered at this time and produce is easy to come by. Indeed, many people acquire from the Saru everything they will need for the next year. Without these provisions, the people of Mecca would lead a miserable existence.
Strangely enough, the Saru do not sell any of this produce for dirhems or dinars. Instead they exchange them for clothes, principally for two kinds of cloaks, the ʿabat and the shimal. The Meccans produce these garments for them, along with women’s veils, heavy quilts, and other things popular with the Bedouin. They say that when the Saru remain at home and fail to bring provisions to the Blessed City, they are afflicted there by drought and their flocks and herds die, but when they come, their lands produce a full harvest and they are blessed. So when the time for departure arrives, if preparations are careless and the men malinger, the women collect the provisions and drive their husbands from the houses. Their lands are fertile and extensive, abounding in figs and vines, with wide fields and rich crops, and the Saru firmly believe that this prosperity is due to the provisions they bring and that they are doing business not just with the Meccans but with God. All this is Allah’s way of looking after Mecca, the Safe City.
MECCA. THE MONTH OF SHABAN, NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 1183 The blessed night of the middle of Shaban is esteemed by Meccans because of the noble tradition that has come down to us about it.26 They compete with each other in performing sacred rites like the Umra, the tawaf, and prayers both individual and congregational. . . . In the middle of the month, which fell on Saturday this year, immediately after the evening prayers we saw a great throng in the Haram. Men began to say special prayers in groups, reciting the first chapter of the Quran and repeating “God is One” ten times for each prayer sequence until they had done one hundred sequences. Each group had chosen an imam, mats were spread out, candles lit, torches kindled. In addition, the lamp of the moonlit sky shed its brightness on the earth, the rays converging in the Haram, which is itself a light. An unimaginable scene, sublime beyond your dreams! . . .
That night Ahmad ibn Hassan, my traveling companion, witnessed something amazing, one of those remarkable events that prove unforgettable. As it happened, he felt weary in the last third of night and retired to rest on the bench that surrounds the dome of the Zamzam Well. Here he lay down to take a nap, facing the Black Stone and the door of the Kaʿba. Suddenly a foreign man appeared and seated himself on a corner of the bench near Hassan’s head. There he began to recite the Quran in a moving and tender voice, interspersed with sighs and sobbing. He recited the verses beautifully, instilling their feeling and meaning into the soul. My comrade Hassan gave up his nap to enjoy the beauty of what he heard, with all its yearning and emotion. When the man finally finished, he said,
If evil deeds have taken me far from You,
My honest thoughts have brought me near again,
repeating the words like a melody designed to break the heart. Again and again he repeated these lines while his tears flowed and his voice shook and grew weak, until Hassan feared that the man was about to faint. No sooner had this crossed his mind than the man fell to the ground, lying there like something tossed aside, without a movement. Ibn Hassan sat up at once, alarmed by the frightening thing he had seen, unsure whether the man was alive or dead, for he had fallen quite a distance—the bench was considerably higher than the ground. A man who had been asleep nearby wakened then, too, and they both were bewildered, afraid to awake the man or even approach him. Finally a foreign woman passed and shouted at them, “Is this the way you leave a man in such a condition?” and she quickly fetched a little water from the well and wet his face. The other two came nearer then and raised the man to a sitting position. When he saw them, however, he hid his face, afraid they might identify him later, and quickly fled toward the Gate of the Guardians. The two men sat wondering what they had seen. Ibn Hassan soon regretted missing his chance to gain the man’s blessings, for things had happened quickly and prevented him from asking, nor could he remember the man’s face. These foreign hajjis are really remarkable for their sensibility, emotionalism, their capacity for ecstasy, and the ardor of their worship. Such grace, of course, is in God’s hands. He bestows it on whom he wishes.
MECCA. THE MONTH OF THE PILGRIMAGE, MARCH–APRIL 1184 The new moon of this month rose on Thursday night, corresponding with the fifteenth of March of the Christians. . . . This is the third of the sacred months. During its first ten days the people assemble [and perform the Hajj]. It is the great period of the pilgrimage, the month of chanting “Here am I, Lord,” the time of sacrifice, when God’s envoys from every country come together. It is the target of Allah’s mercy and blessing, the month of the solemn vigil on the Plain of Arafat. . . .
During this period large crowds of pilgrims from the Yemen and many other lands were converging on the city in such numbers that only God could count them. Mecca lies in a valley about a bow shot wide. Its ability to expand and to accommodate such crowds is one of God’s miracles. The learned doctors are right to compare it to the mother’s uterus that miraculously makes room for its child. Were such a crowd brought into the largest city on the earth, it could not contain it.
From the start of the month the drums of the Amir were beaten morning and evening and at the hours of prayer, to mark the solemnity of the period. The drums continued until the day when we went up to Arafat. . . .
The people flowed out of Mecca all that day, all night, and all Friday, stopping about five miles outside town, at Mina, then going on another five to Muzdalifa, then another five to Arafat, so that an uncountable number were finally assembled on the plain there. About a mile away from Muzdalifa . . . lies the Valley of Muhassir, a boundary between Mina and Muzdalifa, through which custom requires the pilgrims to pass at a quickened pace. Muzdalifa itself is a wide expanse of land between two mountains. Around it lie the reservoirs and cisterns built in the time of Queen Zubayda,27 God rest her soul. In the middle of this plain is an enclosure, called Mashʿar al-Haram [Sacred Shrine]. At the center of the enclosure is a round knoll with a mosque on top and steps leading up two sides. Pilgrims amass in crowds as they climb up to pray inside it. They pass the night at Muzdalifa.
Arafat is a wide plain too, broad enough to contain the whole congregation of mankind on Resurrection Day. The plain is surrounded by many mountains. At its most eastern extreme stands the Mount of Mercy (Jabal al-Rama). The standing ground for the Hajj vigil lies all around it. . . . It rises in the middle of the plain, separated from the other mountains. It is composed of discrete sections of granite and hard to climb. Jamal al-Din,28 whose works have already been cited in this journal, built low steps on all four sides so wide that laden animals climb it. Great sums were spent on their construction. At the summit stands a cupola named after Umm Salima.29 A mosque stands beneath the cupola. Into this the pilgrims crowd to pray. Around it runs a terrace, broad and lovely to the eye, overlooking the Plain of Arafat. A southern wall holds many prayer niches for the pilgrims. At the mountain’s foot is an ancient house with a vaulted upper room, attributed to Adam, may God preserve him. To its left, facing Mecca, is the rock beside which the Prophet traditionally stood, on a small hill. Around the mountain and the house are many wells and cisterns. To the left of the house is a small mosque. Near the mileposts marking the sacred territory stand the ruins of a much larger mosque, of which the south wall, named for Abraham, remains. The imam delivers a sermon here on the day of the vigil, then he leads the combined midday and afternoon prayers. To the left of the markers facing Mecca lies the Valley of the Thorn Tree, whose green spines stretch in the distance across the plain. . . .
The next morning a multitude filled the plain, greater than anyone living could remember. . . . Some very judicious pilgrims who have settled here in Mecca swore they had never seen such crowds. Personally, I don’t believe that since the time of Harun al-Rashid,30 the last caliph to perform the pilgrimage, there has been such a gathering of Muslims. May God grant them immunity and mercy.
The people stood in tears during the prayers, begging God for mercy. The cries of “Allahu akbar! God is great!” rose in the air. It was a day unequaled in weeping and penitence, of necks bent down in reverent submission and humility before God. The hajjis went on this way, while the sun burned their faces, until the time arrived for the sunset prayers.
The Amir of the Hajj had appeared by now with numerous soldiers dressed in mail. They took up a position near the small mosque on the rocks. The Saru tribes from Yemen took up their appointed posts on the Mount of Mercy, places they have occupied by inheritance since the days of the Prophet. No tribe encroached on the positions of another. The Amir of Iraq arrived too, with a record crowd around him, accompanied by dignitaries from Khurasan and by royal princesses and many women, the daughters of amirs among them. . . . This encampment was beautiful to see and superbly equipped with large handsome tents and wonderful pavilions and awnings, an incomparable scene. The grandest camp, the Amir’s, is surrounded by a linen screen, forming a kind of closed-in garden. The tents are pitched within, all black on a white background, dappled and variegated like flowers in a garden. The screen is decorated on all sides with startling black shields painted on the linen with such realism that passersby might take them for the shields of mounted knights. The screens are pierced by tall doors as in a castle, through which one enters a confusing maze of halls, beyond which the tents and pavilions stand on open ground. It is as though the Amir inhabits a walled city that moves when he moves and settles where he settles. This piece of royal splendor is like nothing seen among the Western kings. Beyond the doors are the Amir’s chamberlains, servants, and other followers. The doors are so high that a horseman with a banner can pass through without bowing his head. All these constructions are remarkably arranged and secured to the ground with linen cords and wooden stakes. The other amirs that year had lesser camps, but all of them were similar in style, with splendid pavilions that closely resembled giant crowns. By the size and equipment of their encampments, the profusion of their wealth was beyond question.
When the inhabitants of these camps travel by camel they ride beneath the shade of canopies raised over wooden litters. These are like cradles, and the travelers ride like infants in a bed, for the litters are filled with soft mattresses on which the traveler sits in comfort, as on a bed. Facing him, in the other half of the litter, sits his companion, man or woman, and above their heads the canopy protects them. They move along undisturbed, napping or reading the Quran or playing chess. When they reach their destination, once the screens are set in place, they enter the enclosure without descending. Ladders are then brought up and they get down, passing from the shade of the canopy into their bedroom tents without being touched by the wind or a ray of sun. . . .
The pilgrims departed Arafat after sunset, as I have said. Late that night they came to Muzdalifa, where they combined their sundown and early-evening prayers, as the Prophet did before them. Throughout the night the Mashʿar al-Haram was illuminated by candle lamps. The mosque was lighted too, so that looking out over the plain it was as if all the stars of the sky twinkled upon it. It looked the same on the Mount of Mercy and its mosque, for the foreigners from Khurasan and some of the Iraqis make it a point to bring great numbers of candles to these shrines. The Haram Mosque at Mecca looked the same during their stay, because every time they entered it, they went in carrying a candle. We saw one enormous example, the size of a cypress tree, which they set before the Hanafi imam, for most of the Iraqis follow that practice.31
That night the pilgrims stayed at Muzdalifa. Here during the night a majority of them collected the little pebbles they would throw at the jamarat pillars in the next three days. (Gathering them here is the more popular tradition, although others collect them around the Khayif mosque in Mina.) After the predawn prayer they left for Mina. When they reached it, they hurried to throw their first seven stones at the largest pillar, then they sacrificed an animal. After this, in keeping with the laws of pilgrimage, they were free to return to the normal activities of life, except for sexual relations and use of perfume. From these two pleasures they must abstain until they have circled the Kaʿba again in Mecca. Most people stoned the largest pillar around sunrise on the day of the sacrifice, then they left for Mecca to perform their circumambulations. Some stayed on until the second day, and some remained until the third, the official day for returning to the city. On the day after the sacrifice, as the sun falls off the meridian, the hajjis cast seven stones at each of the three pillars, saying prayers at the first two places, all of which follows the example of the Prophet, God bless and preserve him. The great pillar is stoned last on these two days, but on the day of sacrifice it is the first and only pillar stoned.
On Saturday, the day of the sacrifice, the kiswa, or covering of the holy Kaʿba, was borne on four camels into Mecca from the camp of the Iraqi Amir. The newly appointed judge of the city walked before it, wearing black robes provided by the Caliph, led by banners and followed by rolling drums. . . . The kiswa was placed on the roof of the Kaʿba, and on Tuesday the thirteenth the guardians were busy draping it over the building. Its beautiful ripe-green color dazzled the eye. A broad red band ran around its upper section. On the side facing the Station of Abraham, the side with the door in it, there was written on this band the words Bismillah32. “Surely the first Sanctuary appointed for humanity was that at Bekkah [Mecca].”33 The Caliph’s name was written on the other sides, along with some invocations in his favor. Running around the band were two reddish zones with small white lozenges holding finely written verses from the Quran and other references to the Caliph. When the Kaʿba was completely covered, the hem of the kiswa was tucked up to protect it from the hands of visiting pilgrims, who pull the cloth violently and throw themselves upon it with emotion. At this moment the House of God presented the most beautiful sight imaginable, like an unveiled bride in the best green silk brocade. May God let it be viewed by everyone who wants to see it. . . .
On Thursday night the fifteenth, after the prayers at nightfall, a pulpit and stairs were set before Abraham’s Station, and a preacher from Khurasan went up the steps, a man with a handsome face and graceful gestures. He spoke fluent Arabic and Persian, employing them both according to the best rules of oratory, with eloquence and clarity. When he spoke to the Persians, he made them shake with emotion and melt with sighs. The next evening a pulpit was set before the Hanafi pavilion, and after the evening prayer a dignified shaykh with white mustaches mounted the steps and delivered a graceful sermon, through which he strung, word by word, the Throne Verse,34 employing every sort of exhortation, utilizing every branch of knowledge. He, too, used both languages, moving listeners to a state of rapture, then setting fire to their emotions. Questions flew from the audience like arrows and were met by long replies that ravished the mind and left us transfixed with wonder and admiration. It was as if his words were inspired by God. . . . At times men tried to confuse and distract these preachers with questions, but they invariably replied as fast as lightning, in the twinkling of an eye. Superiority is in Allah’s hands.
Reciters stood in front of the preachers, intoning the Quran in harmonies that could seduce hard rock, like David’s psalms. The congregation seemed at a loss what to admire most. In order to give credence to a story about the Prophet, the shaykh mentioned above quoted five of his own ancestors in succession, one after another from his father back. Each one had a special name indicating his fame in the world of scholars and his standing as a conservator of knowledge. The man was steeped in his calling, where the glory is hereditary. . . .
Our stay in the Sanctified City—from August 4, 1183, when we arrived, until April 5, 1184, when we departed—amounted to eight and a third [lunar] months in all, or 245 blessed days. Throughout this period we were out of sight of the Kaʿba for just three days. May God grant that it will not be my last visit to his Sacred Territory.
23 irdabb: the equivalent of forty-three and a half gallons. [Ed.]
24 “Zamzam water is for the end for which one drinks it. If you drink it for a cure, it will cure you; if to fill your stomach, it will satisfy you; and if to ease a burning thirst, it will quench it. This well is the hollow Gabriel made with his feet. With its waters God quenched Ishmael’s thirst.” (Kitab al-Kawkab al-Durri, manuscript, Leiden, 607)
25 Quran XXVIII: 57. [Ed.]
26 “According to popular belief, in the night preceding the fifteenth [of Shaban] the tree of life on whose leaves are written the names of the living is shaken. The names written on the leaves which fall down indicate those who are to die in the coming year. In hadith [the Muslim tradition] it is said that in this night Allah descends to the lowest heaven; from there he calls mortals in order to grant them forgiveness of sins (Tirmidhi, Sunan, b. 39).” (The Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam)
27 Queen Zubayda (reigned 786–809). [Ed.]
28 Jamal al-Din al-Jawad al-Isphahani (died 1164): Vizier of Mosul who built many public works in Mecca and Medina. [Ed.]
29 Umm Salima: one of Muhammad’s later wives; the domed shrine was destroyed in the early nineteenth century by the Wahhabis. [Ed.]
30 Harun al-Rashid (died 809): husband of Zubayda. [Ed.]
31 See footnote on the four schools of Sunni Islam, p. 60. [Ed.]
32 Bismillah: “in the name of God.” [Ed.]
33 Quran III:95. [Ed.]
34 Quran II:256. [Ed.]