17

Harry St. John Philby
Great Britain

1931

Of the travelers in this section who knew King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saʿud, only the British author and explorer St. John Philby lived and worked at court for decades, took his daily meals with the King, and on occasion played a role in the new state’s evolution. In the same period, he also found time to explore and map three quarters of the country. An ex–British civil servant, a friend of the King, and a convert, Philby depicts events in Mecca from a point of view unique in this collection. He performed the Hajj as a privileged resident, traveling with the royal cavalcade, sometimes on camels, at other times by car.

Harry St. John Bridger Philby was born in Ceylon in 1885, the second of four sons to an English coffee grower and an Irish mother from Colombo. When blight struck the fields in the 1880s, his father drowned his losses in alcohol. The mother and children removed to London, where they lived a peripatetic existence for several years before she opened a boarding house in Queen’s Gate. Philby won scholarships to Westminster School, in the shadow of the abbey, then to Trinity College, Cambridge. On completing a course in modern languages, he was accepted into the Indian civil service and arrived in the Punjab in 1907, already versed in French, German, Persian, and Urdu.

Like Richard Burton, Philby was shaped and made gregarious by a nomadic youth. As civil servants, both men moved with ease between the native and British worlds of the Raj. Philby, however, was the more successful. Between 1909 and 1915, he took up Arabic, was posted as a subdistrict officer to Sargodha, married, became District Commissioner and later Chief of the British Language Board. Philby was brilliant, hotheaded, and determined to distinguish himself in service. When World War I began in Europe, he found himself sidelined thousands of miles away. His great ambition, he wrote, was “to take some part in the war, coupled with work among the Arabs.” A few months later he was sent to Iraq to serve Sir Percy Cox, Chief Political Officer of the Indian Expeditionary Force.

In 1917, Cox sent Philby to Ibn Saʿud’s camp near Riyadh to try to resolve the enmity between the eastern desert tribes and the Sharif of Mecca. Ibn Saʿud was slow to warm to British tactics, but he took to Philby right away. A forthright civil servant, fluent in Arabic, schooled in Muslim ways, Philby brought a native’s knowledge of Europe to the Amir’s isolated camp. And he was intrepid. Simply to reach the Saudi base in the Nejd, he had crossed the unmapped wastes of central Arabia, a trip that later earned him the Royal Geographical Society’s Founder’s Medal. Philby, it proved, could ride most Bedouin into the ground, and his wanderlust was boundless. At the end of his visit, he asked the King’s permission to trek overland to Jidda, across a thousand miles of territory barred to travel by Sharif Husayn. This chance to irk his enemy Husayn appealed to Ibn Saʿud, and he provided Philby with local guides and good camels.

Present-day Saudi Arabia is about the size of Western Europe. When Philby arrived there, less than a quarter of its surface had been charted. When he finished his great journeys of the 1950s, the national map was more or less complete. None of the famous names associated with Arabian exploration—Niebuhr, Burckhardt, Seetzen, Burton, Doughty, Blunt, Musil, or Thesiger—covered half so much territory. The dotted lines on the map (see Fig. 16) mark the principal network of Philby’s Arabian travels, much of it accomplished in his sixties. After World War II, when the car’s role in desert travel became apparent, it was Philby who insisted on bouncing down thousands of miles of camel tracks in a Land Rover. The routes of Arabia’s modern highways were first surveyed this way.

We have already seen how travelers from Ibn Battuta to Ali Bey al-Abbasi used Muslim rulers and institutions to further a personal passion for exploration. Philby did the same, availing himself of the King’s largesse to mount dozens of expeditions in the next thirty years, usually into unknown territory. Between 1918 and 1955, Philby was the principal source of Arabian cartography for the Royal Geographical Society, the British Foreign Bureau, and Ibn Saʿud. While his Bedouin companions shook their heads (and sometimes their rifles), the tireless Philby routinely climbed peaks on both sides of every track to improve his maps. His notebooks, preserved at the R.G.S. in London, record every alteration in landscape and compass direction, each animal, snake, and insect sighted, every rock specimen crated and shipped to the British Museum. His longest journey, an eight-month return trek between Mecca and Mukalla in 1936, began with a summer bouncing through the Hijaz in cars and ended the following winter with Philby, carless and alone, trudging on foot and muleback through freezing mountains above eight thousand feet. Returning from each new foray, he routinely wrote a book about his exploits.

The following excerpts begin with an account of Philby’s conversion, followed by selections from his record of the 1931 Hajj. Philby, who attended the pilgrimage every year for the next decade, was well placed to summarize the effects of the Depression on Hajj travel. As he notes, visiting pilgrims fell from a high of 130,000 to 40,000 in 1931 and to half that many two years later, while the government’s revenues dropped correspondingly from five million pounds to less than two million. Here we see the degree to which the Saudi economy still relied on pilgrim receipts and duties. The loss brought on by this crisis caused the value of the local coinage to fall steeply. It is no coincidence that in 1932, Philby turned his attention to desert exploration. Although he was there as a businessman, the cash to do business was simply not in the country. Hajj receipts did not pick up until 1935.

from Arabian Days: An Autobiography and A Pilgrim in Arabia by Harry St. John Bridger Philby

THE PEACE OF ISLAM. SUMMER 1930 Hitherto, with my journalistic work and other writing to keep me busy during the preparatory stages of the commercial venture, and my rather special position in the counsels of the King and his government, I had been fairly content with life at Jidda, but I was beginning to realize that the prospect of spending the rest of my days there was not particularly attractive. At the same time I fully appreciated that in the then circumstances of the country, there was little chance of any great expansion of my sphere of activity in Arabia, as Ibn Saʿud could not afford, even out of friendship for me, to create a precedent which might have awkward consequences thereafter. His considered policy was to maintain friendly and cordial relations with all European countries, and especially with Great Britain, while protecting his realm rigorously from European penetration and the economic and political exploitation that would almost inevitably follow in its train, as they had done pretty well all over the world and, since the war, in various parts of Arabia itself. I could not but approve of that policy, and fully understood that I myself must submit to its consequences. . . .

Be all that as it may, I had fallen in love with Arabia, and the problem that confronted me from 1925 onwards was whether I was prepared to go all the way with the Arabs, or whether it would not be wiser after all to return whence I had come, and try once more to fit into the scheme of things for which my birth and education seemed to have designed me. It was not an easy choice to make in cold blood. I was still young enough to contemplate a political career in England without jeopardizing the business interests which I had established in Jidda. On the other hand I still had plenty to learn and teach the world about Arabia, and it seemed a pity not to stay on and complete the work, to which I had put my hand long since and for which I had such special qualifications. I never really hesitated in my decision, but I took my time in making it, as I knew that, once made, it would be irrevocable. Ibn Saʿud, for his part, had known for some time what was in my mind, but had scrupulously refrained from pressing or even encouraging me to a step which he regarded as lying entirely between myself and my conscience, though his considerate attitude left me in no doubt that he would welcome me into his fold with open arms if I came to it of my own free will. And in the end it was an accident which precipitated my decision.

Towards the end of July 1930, and during the first few days of August, Jidda had been sweltering under a long spell of its foulest weather, with temperatures running up to ninety-three degrees and ninety-five degrees and a humidity almost unbearable. I had been working rather hard to get some chapters of my book on Indian politics finished, and one afternoon, early in August, my head went down on the table like a log and the world seemed to be turning somersaults about me. I suppose it was an ordinary fainting fit, but being unaccustomed to that sort of thing, I thought it was a stroke, and managed to crawl to a sofa, where I lay for some hours in a stupor. On recovering from that, I confess I felt a bit alarmed, but my mind seemed to be working normally, and I began to consider what I should do in the circumstances. It was then that I made my decision.

The King was spending the summer at Taʾif, having come down to Mecca from Riyadh for the pilgrimage and visited Jidda to meet Ryan218 and receive his letters of credence as Minister. Fuʿad Hamza, now Deputy Foreign Secretary in succession to Abdullah Damluji, who had left the country, was at Mecca, and I rang him up to tell him what had happened, and to ask him to tell the King that I had now finally made up my mind regarding the matters we had discussed and wished to visit him at Taʾif to arrange the necessary details. Within a matter of hours the King was on the telephone himself, speaking to me from Taʾif and expressing his pleasure that I had at last made up my mind to come into the fold of the faithful. He went on to say that he was immediately sending Fuʿad Hamza to me with a document which I was to sign, after careful perusal, in token of my acceptance of Islam. This was required for the satisfaction of the ecclesiastical authorities at Mecca, whither I would be conducted the following evening by Fuʿad Hamza himself and the Finance Minister, Abdullah al-Suleyman, to perform the rites of Umra, or the Lesser Pilgrimage, after which I would be welcome at Taʾif. These preliminaries occupied less than twenty-four hours from the moment of my telephoning to Fuʿad, and on the afternoon of 7 August 1930, making to my staff the excuse that I had to meet the Finance Minister in Wadi Fatima to discuss some business matters, I got into my Arab garments and drove off in my green Ford car—out of the old life into the new.

It happened to be a day of good augury, the birthday of the Prophet Muhammad himself. . . . At Hadda I was met by my distinguished sponsors and, after a siesta and tea, performed the prescribed ablutions in a tent and emerged from it in the garb of an ordinary pilgrim. After the sunset prayer, in which I joined my co-religionists for the first time, and an early dinner, I drove with Fuʿad Hamza and Abdullah Suleyman through the cool gloaming of a desert evening, passing through the Alamayn pillars on the boundary of the Sacred Territory and by other spots familiar enough to me in my reading, but now seen vaguely in the darkness for the first time, until we came to Abdullah Suleyman’s villa in the Jarwal quarter of Mecca itself. From there, after a very short delay for coffee and refreshment, I proceeded with the Finance Minister’s own chaplain to the Haram, the Great Mosque of Mecca, to go through the ceremony of the circumambulation of the Kaʿba and the rest of the ritual of the Lesser Pilgrimage under his guidance. It was an impressive and even awe-inspiring experience, but my main immediate impression of the scene and the ceremony was that it was all very familiar and intimate, like something vaguely remembered from a forgotten past. I seemed to be living in a dream, and I was content to relax in an orgy of intellectual and spiritual self-surrender—at least for that one unforgettable night—without concern for the consequences of my action, which was bound, I knew full well, to give rise to a good deal of comment and criticism. As I wrote later to a very good friend, I had, in taking this step, sacrificed neither my sanity nor my sincerity, but it was Ryan who found the best formula for my justification. “Mecca and Islam,” he was reported to have said, “will give Philby the background which he has needed so badly ever since he quarrelled with the government.” I certainly did seem to have now some sort of positive ideal or objective to work for henceforth, and I felt like some disembodied spirit restored by accident or miracle to its proper environment. For the first time for many years I felt strangely at peace with the world.

THE MECCAN PILGRIMAGE: PREPARATIONS By the end of the third week in April 1931, the last batch of pilgrim ships—from Egypt and the Sudan, from Morocco and Syria, from India and the Far East—had arrived in Jidda, and a disappointingly meagre concourse of some 40,000 visitors from overseas had gathered at Mecca, to be swelled during the few remaining days by perhaps twice that number of pilgrims from Nejd and Yemen and of local Hijazis.

The number of pilgrims from abroad during the preceding five years had varied between 80,000 and 120,000; and the drop in 1931 was mainly due to the worldwide economic depression which marked that and subsequent years. In 1932 the number fell further to 30,000 and in the following year to only 20,000. This represented the trough of the depression, for in 1934 the attendance from abroad rose to 25,370 and since then there had been a slow but steady improvement until the present war set back the clock once more. For the decade preceding the war the average number of foreign pilgrims visiting Mecca each year may have been about 35,000. Before this period the influx of pilgrims from Malaya and the Dutch East Indies alone frequently exceeded 50,000 souls in a year; and it was particularly this element which dwindled to meagre proportions owing to the subsequent slump in the prices of the commodities they produce—sugar and rubber in particular.

The new moon of 19 April had not been seen in the Hijaz, and news of its actual sighting that evening was anxiously awaited from the newcomers from far afield in desert and mountain. The actual day of the central ceremony of the pilgrimage—the Standing by Jabal al-Rahma in the vast Plain of Arafat on the ninth day of the lunar month of Dhu al-Hijja—could not be fixed in the absence of such information; and it was not till Thursday, 23 April, the fifth day of the month, that the prevailing uncertainty was relieved by the production before, and certification by, the ecclesiastical authorities of the necessary evidence. The moon had indeed been seen on the evening preceding 19 April and the ninth day of Dhu al-Hijja would thus fall on Monday, the twenty-seventh. Plans could now be made for the great exodus to Mina and Arafat, and those who would be early on the scene—to make holiday under the stars until the great Standing—began moving out from Mecca after the Friday prayers of the twenty-fourth.

That same evening the actual pilgrimage celebrations began with the customary royal banquet at the palace, to which between six hundred and seven hundred guests had been bidden, including Amanollah Khan, ex-king of the Afghans; Prince Ahmad Saif al-Din, grandson of Sultan Abd al-Aziz of the House of Osman; the Afghan Minister at Cairo and other representatives of the reigning Afghan King, Nader Khan; Sir A. K. Ghaznavi of the Bengal Executive Council; and others too numerous to mention, representatives of practically every country and community professing the faith of Islam. . . .

THE HAJJ PROCESSIONAL The next day saw the exodus of white-clad, bare-headed pilgrims to Arafat in full swing. . . . The long broad street that leads from the Great Mosque through the city eastward past the historic cemetery of al-Ma’ala and the royal palace in Ma’abida was all day long a scene of unceasing and ever-increasing activity as the long trains of litter-bearing camels, often four or five lines abreast, got under way, moving slowly but steadily to their destination some nine or ten miles distant. Between the files of those travelling in this manner small bands of pilgrims on donkeys threaded their way at a somewhat faster pace in and out of the motley rout. And yet the broad fairway had room enough for the legions that went on foot, old and young, men, women and children, generally in companies sporting multicoloured banners to serve as rallying points for the various groups both on the road and ultimately on the Plain of Arafat, now rapidly becoming a city of tents. These banners and the sun covers of the litters added a touch of gay colour to the otherwise white and brown mass of bodies and pilgrim robes that passed seemingly without end along the road. Here and there a valiant group of new arrivals from the East, intent on performing the ceremonies connected with first entry into Mecca, stemmed the eastward stream with such speed as they could make in the circumstances to reach the Haram, as the Great Mosque of Mecca is called. And every now and then a privileged motorcar with a pass signed by the King’s own hand—for all motor traffic in the city had been suspended by order for the two days of the main exodus—snorted or purred in the throng, carefully feeling its way eastward or westward according to the errand of its occupants. As the day advanced towards evening, the throng of camels, donkeys, pedestrians, became ever more thick, and the shades of night fell upon a city still pouring forth its denizens in an endless stream.

THE EXODUS TO ARAFAT The flood continued with undiminished volume the next day, the traditional date for the exodus and known as Yawm al-Tarwiyya.219 Only the King and his entourage sat still, going about their normal work till the hour fixed for their departure in the early afternoon. “It is like a campaign,” said the King, “this pilgrimage business.” And so it was for him. From every part of the now-extended theatre of activities reports of progress and events were brought to him for his orders or attention: perhaps a motorcar trying to evade the restrictions on movement in force within the city or on the road to Arafat, or now a car capsized by some chauffeur’s folly and needing succour for its damaged passengers, or again some member of the royal family or high official requiring transport, and so on. No matter was too small for the King’s personal attention, which was throughout concentrated on the determination to make everything as successful as conditions would allow. And all the time he never moved from his place at headquarters which had been temporarily connected up by telephone with Mina, three miles distant, the advanced base whither the royal family had already gone overnight by car to be accommodated in a large but simple palace constructed during the preceding two months or, rather, greatly extended in comparison with the humble building of the earlier years.

I was to ride with the King but, owing to a last-minute hitch and the consequent late arrival of my riding camel, I actually made the journey to Mina by motorcar with the Minister of Finance, and thus had an opportunity of seeing the new route prescribed for all motor vehicles in order to leave the main road free for camels and pedestrians. The Nejdi camel still appears to have a rooted objection to the noisy lumbering motorcar, though his Hijazi brother has long reconciled himself to the latter’s intrusion and competition.

The motor track follows the valley to the south of Mina which carries the splendid masonry aqueduct of Queen Zubayda at a high level along the flank of the low hills on the left hand as we went up. A car or two we found embedded in the occasional ugly patches of sand to be negotiated on this route, and another vehicle had apparently overturned owing to its too great speed over rocks hidden in the deep sand. Its more or less injured occupants were couched in its shade awaiting relief. Otherwise we reached Mina without incident after doubling back from the end of the spur dividing the two roads. The King was alone at the moment in the great newly built reception chamber adjoining the Mina palace, the camels of his bodyguard being couched around, while the various members of the royal family occupied the blocks of tents placed at their disposal.

Mina, a deserted and derelict village for 350 days of each lunar year, had suddenly come to life. Every one of its not numerous houses was fully occupied by pilgrims paying exorbitant rents—often as high as thirty or forty pounds for the few days of the festival. Its vast valley between low black hills had blossomed into a city of tents, and its single road, passing through the village and the middle of the valley, was thronged with pedestrians and caravans going through to Arafat, where many pilgrims prefer to spend the night in contrast to those of the Hanbali persuasion, for the most part people from Nejd, who, following as always the actual practice of the Prophet, spend the first night at Mina for the afternoon, sunset, and evening prayers of that day and do not move forward till after the sun has risen a spear’s length above the horizon the following morning.

Dinner was served for the royal party in a huge tent near the palace, and after the meal I strolled through the camp and village—no easy matter in the ever-moving throng of camels and people. The moon lent enchantment to the scene, and I noticed that the three “devils” set up at intervals in the village—each a low masonry pillar within a circular masonry wall of modest dimensions—had been newly whitewashed against their customary lapidation during the holidays following the pilgrimage. The petty shopkeepers of Mina seemed to be doing a brisk business in the unconsidered trifles that pilgrims must have on such an occasion—souvenirs, foodstuffs, and water.

I had my bed laid out near the main road on the edge of the great platform adjoining the palace, and as I dozed off to sleep under the stars with no covering but my pilgrim garments, the ghostly train passed by unceasingly on the way to Arafat. The air buzzed all night with the querulous murmuring—half bray and half bleat—of camels and the fussy grinding of cars. No less than three hundred motor vehicles composed the fleet destined to take the royal family to its destination—its women and slaves and children even down to the less than year old Talal, the baby of the King’s fifty-odd children.

On such occasions in the East there is no such thing as recognized hours of sleep. Many indeed slept, including myself, but our slumbers did not diminish the din, to which I awoke again about 3:00 a.m. for the dawn prayer in the great reception room. It would still be long before sunrise, and the King, according to his wont, having slept but little, was engrossed in his sacred readings, while we sat round drinking coffee and tea. . . .

As the light of day began to intrude upon the dust haze of the valley from behind the black hills, there was a stirring among the camels at the palace door. In another moment we were all in the saddle, and as the King’s party moved down the valley, converging trains soon swelled the cavalcade to magnificent proportions. Not less than ten thousand camels rode behind the King that morning, the morning of the Hajj, and noiselessly enough though roughly the cavalcade swept down the valley like an untamed flood as the sun rose slowly but surely and at length peeped down over the crest of the black hills on to a haze of hanging dust. On past the solitary minaret of Muzdalifa we swept and through the narrow valley of the Mazumayn to the bazan water tanks, where the Zubayda aqueduct swings across the road. And then we came to the two pillars marking the boundary of the Sacred Territory of Mecca. Beyond it lies the secular, or neutral, ground of Wadi Arina, in which is the mosque of Namira, a vast whitened enclosure with crenellated walls but without a minaret. Here in the neutral area, whose further border towards the Plain of Arafat is marked with other boundary pillars, we drew rein to halt, according to the Prophet’s practice, till the early afternoon. Tents had been put up in advance, and we were soon tackling a frugal though not unwelcome breakfast, after which repose and, if possible, sleep were the order of the day. Not far ahead Jabal al-Rahma, the Mount of Mercy, which is the central feature of the Arafat Plain, stood out conspicuous with the whitened pillar on its summit over a canopy of dust haze marking the visible tent city which had sprung up overnight for the accommodation of the pilgrims. All around us was the sand valley of Arina with scattered tents, while vast crowds of pilgrims, mostly African blacks from far afield, centred on the Namira mosque and its bounteous wells. The day warmed to its work, exuding heat in the forenoon only to dissipate it in due course with gentle breezes which struck delightfully cool on our scantily clad bodies grouped in the grateful shade of tents. Water was plentiful, and even ice was in evidence from the royal palace.

For a brief space the King slept, and soon after noon we were summoned to his tent for the midday meal of mutton and rice and other simple things, after which we walked across the stretch of sand, now like fire to the bare feet and necessitating the use of sandals, to the Namira mosque, where the vast assembly of waiting worshippers made access to our places before the pulpit and mihrab not a little difficult. . . .

The sermon was preached by Shaykh Abdullah ibn Hasan, the chief ecclesiastic of Mecca, who mounted the steps of the simple pulpit, camel stick in hand, and proceeded to set forth in some detail the ordinances of the Prophet regarding the pilgrimage. The congregation from time to time gave vent to tears or tearful demonstrations as the memories of the Prophet’s Farewell Pilgrimage of a.d. 632—almost exactly thirteen hundred years ago—were brought freshly to mind. Close by me an aged Indian lay convulsed in sobs, and one began to feel in common with one’s fellow worshippers something of the solemnity of an occasion, designed to keep alive in the hearts of men the story of an inspiration which had reached its climax on this very spot so many centuries ago in the perfection of a faith which in the interval has spread far beyond the borders of Arabia to be a guiding light to millions upon millions in Asia and Africa and even in Europe. . . .

The sermon at Namira . . . was followed by the noon and afternoon prayers, combined in accordance with the Prophet’s practice and led by Shaykh Abdullah from his place before the mihrab, or niche oriented towards Mecca. The congregation then dispersed and swarmed out of the mosque in a sort of sauve-qui-peut. We returned to our tents, and there the King was visited by various Indian and other pilgrims desirous of saluting the Prince of the Faithful. They were provided with coffee and food, and soon after 1:00 p.m. the King was in the saddle with his bodyguard, moving to the culminating ceremony of the Standing on Arafat.

The royal bodyguard was at this time entirely composed of His Majesty’s henchmen from Nejd, some two hundred or three hundred strong—a sturdy, tough-looking body of men, all clad like the other pilgrims in the white garments of the ihram but differentiated from them by the fact that they carried rifles and cartridge belts, swords, and daggers. Latterly it has been considered more consonant with the King’s dignity to have an escort of “regular” troops trained on the European model and instructed in the arts of saluting and heel clicking. During the pilgrimage, however, even regular troops have to discard their uniforms and wear the ihram, so that the scene has not changed except to the experienced eye, which easily detects the (generally) town-bred soldier from the desert-born janissary. Even so and in spite of the presence of the official royal escort the old bodyguard has not disbanded itself and is always to be found somewhere near the King’s body, to guard it against all harm.

The Mount of Mercy, whose chief feature is a low granitic hummock about 100 to 150 feet high marked by a white pillar, is in fact a ridge with three low peaks, whose sand-covered slopes descend to form a semicircular enclave bounded on the outer side by the masonry of the Ain Zubayda Aqueduct. Outside this hill mass to west and south lay the Plain of Arafat with its temporary city of tents. All this area to the border of Wadi Arina is “Standing” ground, but a low mass of rocks on the south side of the arena above described is regarded as the spot on which the Prophet “stood” for the ceremony on the occasion of his Farewell Pilgrimage. Here accordingly is the traditional “Standing” area of the people of Nejd, and into this space they duly gathered in their thousands and tens of thousands from about 2:00 p.m. onwards, when the King and his party with the green Wahhabi standards unfurled in their midst took up their positions. Every man remained mounted on his camel facing not towards the hill (which is, however, permissible) but towards the qibla, the Meccan Kaʿba. Among the crowd were also the covered litters of women screened from male gaze. Thus bare-headed and in the scant pilgrim robes with never an umbrella to disgrace the scene (though they were common enough among the non-Nejdi elements on the plain), the huge throng remained through the afternoon from 2:00 p.m. to sunset reciting the prayers prescribed for the occasion, an endless prayer for the forgiveness of God and the remission of sins. At the head of the Nejdi group, bareheaded like the rest, stood the King, flanked by his brothers and sons, reading from the little “book of words” published by his order for the guidance of the congregation.

In other parts of the vast field, which I seized the opportunity to visit during the afternoon, there seemed to be more of a festival air. Groups of people remained in their tents rather than face the downward rays of the sun—fierce enough in the circumstances, though a cool dry breeze did much to mitigate the severity of the ordeal even in the open. The poorer folk had brought along a few palm fronds with them, which they rigged up with sacking to form small tents and shelters, while the Negroes from Africa grouped themselves on the flanks of the hill and along the Zubayda channel whence they got water in plenty to drink and for their ablutions.

This African element, collectively known as Takruri,220 though it comprises many different tribes of the Dark Continent—as widely separated, for instance, as the Sudan and Nigeria—is of considerable interest. . . .

Most of these Takruris spend several years on their journey from their homes to Mecca, generally working their way across the African continent and often spending several years on the cotton plantations of the Sudan. I once met a man and wife who had started out with a single child and had a family of six on the completion of their pilgrimage—their journey up to this point having taken fourteen years. But the most venerable Takruri pilgrim of my experience was a sturdy old man who claimed to be 120 years old and to have spent no less than seventy years on the road from Lagos to Jidda, where I met him in 1930. His whole life had been spent in the study of Islamic religion and philosophy, and his long journey had involved considerable sojourns at various centres of learning on the way. By careful cross-examination I elicited from him the interesting fact that he had been in Khartoum in the year of General Gordon’s death at the hands of the Mahdi’s force.221

Altogether there was a striking absence of all ceremonial in the proceedings at Arafat. People seemed to do much what they liked, the fact that they were pitched on the plain during the prescribed hours being satisfaction of the obligation connoted by the term “Standing.”

The Egyptian contingent had a ritual of its own, as one might expect. During my wanderings I noticed a large gathering of men and women— obviously folk of some substance—lined up in rows behind a chorus leader with their backs turned on Mecca and their faces to the Mount of Mercy as they repeated in unison the sentences intoned by the leader and waved their handkerchiefs towards the hill as they did so. This was obviously a ritual surviving from the days of the mahmal, and nobody seemed to worry about their strange proceedings for the Wahhabi legions—positively legions—were on the other side of the hill, well out of sight. Elsewhere the “Standing” crowds held services of their own in little groups of twenty or thirty persons in the shelter of their large tents or awnings or merely sat or lay about drinking tea or even sleeping out the weary hours of the ordeal till sunset.

Perhaps in Turkish or sharifal times, when the Standing took the form of an organized service and the various stages of the sermon on the mount were punctuated by gunfire or other devices, the ceremony may have been more spectacular or imposing, but one had only to turn to the Nejdi arena to realize that a new spirit had come into the Arafat celebrations—a conviction of the essential purpose of the pilgrimage and of the human duty of humility and endurance that alone make it “acceptable” to God.

In due course, though very slowly, the blazing sun relented of his fierceness as he sank towards the crest of Jabal Thaur over against Mecca. The disc sank till it became invisible behind the line of the black hills. The prayers melted into a palpable silence, after which came a faint rustling, and in a moment, the sun having set, the great cavalcade was once more in motion for the return journey. So far as I can remember, no writer has previously emphasized the fact that the Arafat ceremony is essentially a festival of the camel. As I moved forward with the royal cavalcade and cast my eyes over the scene, it was the camel that chiefly impressed me. All over the immense plain, suddenly in motion towards the valley leading back to Mecca, it was the lines and phalanxes of camels that caught my eye. There must have been some fifty thousand of them at least, and all moving forward together at the silent, hurried pace characteristic of the chief carrier of Arabia. It was, indeed, a goodly scene, and as the dusk increased and the dust rose from the padding feet, our legions seemed to lose reality and to become as it were a ghostly, heavenly host, moving so silently, so mysteriously in the dim limbo of a twilight illuminated by the moon above with Mars and Jupiter ahead and Sirius, Betelgeuse, and Capella in their train. For all the light of the moon it soon became impossible to see anything clearly in that moving mist with the white-shrouded bodies of men raised high aloft on their giant steeds. Past stunted shrubs and thorny acacia bushes we brushed, and as the valley narrowed between the darkening hills, we swept past litter-bearing caravans and groups of walking men and women—nay, even groups seated, resting on the ground as if conscious by instinct that that celestial host would pass over them without harm. It was amazing how, though we could scarcely see more than a few paces ahead, the camels instinctively avoided all obstacles in their path, human or otherwise, which rapidly receded through our phalanx to the rear.

THE RETURN TO MECCA Passing into Meccan territory through the boundary pillars, we marched up the valley and through the Mazumayn Pass, where there suddenly burst upon us a fairy scene as of some huge city with its myriad lights, great arc lamps in regular lines and smaller lanterns perched on posts. There had been no trace of this city at our passing in the morning. It had grown up suddenly in the valley since dusk. This was Muzdalifa, where we were to spend the night according to the Prophet’s practice. The King’s party moved towards the left flank of the valley and halted on a slope of sand not far from the mosqueless minaret. The motor vehicles had introduced an element of disorder and confusion into the scene and certainly made the night hideous enough, but there were apparently no accidents, and the royal household was in due course accommodated in the tents set up for its use.

Motor cars were tending to become an increasing element in the pilgrimage scene. At the time of which I write, the privilege of using them was still confined to the royal family and officials on duty, but in 1933 permission was granted to a wider circle, while in the following year all restrictions were removed, and the number of motor vehicles taking part in the ceremony was not less than four hundred. Since then the number has steadily increased, and foreign pilgrims who can afford the luxury have now little to complain of in the matter of comfort.

All around was the murmuring of camels and the cries of men calling to their missing companions—a veritable orchestra of discord. How anybody found anyone else in that mushroom city of a night, which none had seen nor was to see by day—for we would be on the move again long before sunrise—was a mystery to me.

The King himself camped in the open on rugs spread over the sandy slope, and in due course a noble meal of mutton and rice on a dozen portentous trays was spread out on a long carpet for our refreshment. We ate with a will, and after us the rest of the escort; and then the King ordered his henchmen to go forth and bring in the wayfaring pilgrims, who came in their hundreds, eager, famished, to feed at the royal table and, as I noticed in many cases, to put by in the corner of their grizzled robes some provender for the morrow. And they went their way rejoicing with full bellies and loud thanks. We slept.

I woke again seemingly in the middle of the night to the sound of grinding cars and groaning camels. The King was a few paces off, engrossed in his religious reading, and soon, though I was still heavy with sleep, we lined up for the dawn prayer about 3:00 a.m. We then mounted and moved off to the minaret of Muzdalifa, where we halted, though remaining mounted, for about half an hour for a ceremony of prayer and thanksgiving prescribed by the Prophet for those reaching this point on their return journey. The minaret was hung with great arc lamps, and groups of pilgrims seemed to be gathered about it and even on the squat tower by its side. Others groped about in the sand of the valley, which is Wadi Muhassir, to collect the forty-nine pebbles larger than a peanut needed for the coming lapidation of the “devils.” We had incidentally collected ours from the ground where we had camped for the night—it would seem that they may be collected from anywhere in the Muzdalifa neighbourhood, though Wadi Muhassir is the place prescribed by tradition—and had duly made them fast in a corner of our towels.

Later, however, I noticed at Mina that many of the pilgrims, unmindful of the special virtue of stones gathered at Muzdalifa according to the Prophet’s injunctions, were groping about in the gritty streets of the village for the requisite missiles. It may readily be imagined that fifty thousand pilgrims hurling forty-nine pebbles apiece at the effigies of Satan, which will be explained in due course, succeeded in adding substantially to the rubble heaps of Mina, which in the course of centuries should grow into mounds of considerable size—but for a putative miracle resulting, as is commonly believed, in the spontaneous disappearance of each year’s contribution of execration before the next instalment becomes due.

As the light of day slowly grew upon us, the arc lamps were removed from the minaret, and our prayers over, we resumed our advance up the valley towards Mina. Here or hereabouts our camels suddenly shied at something on the path, which proved to be a camel that had fallen and died by the way. I also observed one stretcher on which a sick or injured person was being carried, but I may say here that all through the proceedings up to this point and indeed up to my return to Mecca the same morning, I had noticed no other sign of any casualty in the vast throng—perhaps a hundred thousand pilgrims in all.

Moving through the gradually lessening gloom, we came to Mina, where the King immediately exchanged his camel for a horse and proceeded forthwith up the street of Mina to the Aqaba [Pillar] for the obligatory lapidation of the “Great Devil.” Most people had dismounted to follow him, but I did so on my camel, which I only left when the crowd became too dense as we neared our destination. Completing the last hundred yards on foot, I arrived at the Aqaba to find an amazing crowd gathered below, pelting [it] with the pebbles brought from Muzdalifa, seven pebbles each on this occasion. The people seemed seized with a sort of frenzy as they plied their hands in the joyous task with the formulae of execration on their lips, and it was quite impossible to approach near enough to cast my pebbles at the object of the common wrath. My missiles probably alighted on the unheeding heads of those in front.

For the moment that was the end of the ceremony for me, as I found the King’s brother Abdullah mounting a car to return to Mecca for the next stage of the pilgrim rites and was lucky enough to find a place with him. In less than half an hour I was back in my own house enjoying a light breakfast before facing the Meccan ceremonies which would complete and consolidate my Hajj. The essential conditions of the Hajj proper are (1) to assume the ihram which I had done some thirty-six hours before; (2) to “stand” at Arafat, which had also been safely accomplished; and (3) to stone the “Great Devil” immediately on return from Arafat and proceed to Mecca to perform the tawaf (circuit of the Kaʿba) and saʿy (the running between Safa and Marwa) and to have a shave and haircut. Having completed the threefold ceremonies of the third requisite, the pilgrim resumes ordinary clothes and is finally released from all the obligations of ihram. By performing only the first two of these conditions (and leaving the third to another time), he similarly becomes free of all restrictions with the sole exception that intercourse with women is forbidden until he has fulfilled the third condition also. Those who are not accompanied by their womenfolk often defer the Meccan ceremonies till the end of the three days of the Mina holiday.

THE CEREMONIES AT MECCA Though it was but little past 6:00 a.m. when I got back to Mecca, the main street was already overflowing with returning pilgrims, who must have omitted the Muzdalifa stage of the ritual and travelled, walking or camel borne, all night to get there in time. The Haram area was crowded, and the Masaʿa, or track between Safa and Marwa, which the main street cuts obliquely, was thronged with urgent, surging crowds running, walking, pushing, praying, this way and that.

Having refreshed myself and rested awhile, I drove back to the Haram soon after 7:00 A.M. to get through the tawaf and saʿy before the sun was far enough up to make things hot. I drew up at the Bab Ibrahim, the main door of the south frontage of the Great Mosque, and entered through a crowd of beggars anxiously assuring me of their hopes for the “acceptance” of my pilgrimage and in turn accepting without ceremony the mites that I drew from my pocket. . . .

The weathered and rain-stained kiswa of last year had now been rolled up a dozen feet, exposing the solid basalt masonry of the building, massive square-cut blocks of unequal size bound together with a strong greyish mortar. The silver umbo of the Black Stone projected naked from its corner, for all the world like the hawsepipe of a steamer; and on the side between the corner (east) and that of the Yemeni Stone, on the south, the new garment, made in its Meccan factory, had already been let down by a party of workmen on the roof to take the place of the old. In its shining blue-black glossiness of velvety silk, with a splendid band of gold arabesque two thirds of the way up, it stood out in striking contrast with the washed-out drapery that still clung to the other three sides, to be replaced as fast as the men could work. And even as I watched, the great sheet of new drapery for the main (northeast) front was let down with a rush to bury momentarily under its skirt the crowd of pilgrims pressing forward with prayerful invocations to the raised lintel of the great silvered door, which was at this time open under the guardianship of members of the Banu Shayba family—the hereditary Holders of the Key of the Kaʿba by divine decree—for the admission of those who could pay the price. When the four pieces of the kiswa are in place, they are duly dressed and joined up by workmen lowered from the roof on a platform operated by a wooden crane and pulley—the last item of the proceeding being the filling of the gap of the kiswa over the Kaʿba doorway by the rich burqa, or veil of silk and gold-lettered arabesque.

For the moment my business was the performance of the tawaf, the sevenfold circuit of the Kaʿba beginning with the kissing or salutation of the Black Stone: “In the name of God, God is great.” Two uniformed policemen stood on duty at this spot to regulate the ever-increasing pressure and keep the stream flowing. To do this, they had to use their canes and fists freely enough, and the scene round this, the most sacred spot in the Islamic world, was one of amazing commotion and confusion, which suggested to a European mind thoughts of traffic regulation, barriers, and turnstiles. But a little thought was enough to convince me that nothing of the kind was either feasible (though practicable enough if desired) or desirable. It would go against the basic principles of Islam which, though essentially a democratic and socialist creed, does prescribe and inculcate one element of individualism, which at certain moments—and only at those moments— makes the human ego all-important above the claims of society, race, and even family. Each Muslim, man, woman or child, is personally responsible for the achievement of his own salvation at all costs. That is not only his responsibility but his bounden duty to be performed without regard to the consequences to himself or others. . . . At such moments spiritual energy transcends the intellectual, and those who believe in the basic doctrines of Islam can scarcely wish it otherwise. . . . What matter then if the pilgrim occasionally loses control at the sublime moment of his ecstasy? What matter if he crowds and crushes when a little self-restraint, universally practised, would create a steady and unimpeded flow at the physically narrow centres of exaltation and self-realization? Barriers and turnstiles would perhaps throw back the press to other points of ingress and egress, but after all, nothing can alter the physical configuration of the Meccan valley, while the gradual progress of modernization is already sufficiently advanced to ensure improvements where they are needed without jeopardizing the symbolism of a historic faith. . . .

In due course the seven circuits were accomplished, and I was back where I had begun—at the Black Stone. Nearer approach being physically impossible without acute discomfort, I again saluted the holy emblem from afar and pushed my way through the outer fringes of the circling crowd to the Place of Abraham, or as near it as I could get, for the customary two-bow prayer in celebration of the tawaf duly performed. After this the usual practice is to stand before the door of the Kaʿba and as near to it as possible—indeed right up against the wall with arms upraised upon the kiswa itself in an attitude of despairing imploration—and to murmur such petitions for the betterment of one’s lot in the present and in the inexorable hereafter as one may desire to make. Owing to the press, I omitted this step in the proceedings and refreshed myself with a draught of water from the historic and sacred Well of Zamzam, offered to pilgrims according to custom in metal cups into which it is poured from pear-shaped earthen pots by the zamzamis (water carriers), whom I duly rewarded in suitable proportion to the special occasion, a shilling for perhaps half a pint of the blessed beverage, which, I may take this occasion to remark, has been almost universally and quite unjustly maligned by those who have written of the Meccan ceremonies before me. There is indeed a brackish taste in this water, but of the slightest, and when cold, as it always should be if left awhile in the porous earthen pots, I have always found it a pleasant and refreshing drink— mildly beneficial to the internal machinery of the body and, surely, the most historic and sacred of all earth’s waters. I frankly do not understand the aspersions of Burton, Wavell, Eldon Rutter, and others, and for the benefit of the ignorant, I may add that the well is now (and has for some considerable time been) protected from all possible contamination by the building which completely covers it.

This precaution was certainly necessary, for cases have been known of persons committing suicide by jumping into the well in the mistaken belief that its water would shrive them for immediate admittance to Paradise. Many pilgrims bring with them the winding-sheets in which they intend to be buried in due course, to wash in this Zamzam water, though not actually, of course, in the well. . . .

The last few drops in my second cup were sprinkled over my head and face by the zamzami, and I girt up my loins for the “running.” Issuing from the Haram by the Safa Gate, I joined the throng proceeding to the head of the Masaʿa, or drome—an old mound now built up with several broad steps of basalt and granite and adorned with a comparatively modern arched superstructure. In former times those standing on this mound could see the Kaʿba towards which the opening formulae of the “running” are addressed with hands uplifted. Now the intervening houses and the Haram wall prevent the actual view. The formulae pronounced, one descends for the “course.” The throng of “runners” going and coming in dense gangs or smaller groups or singly without order or method was terrific. One had to make one’s way through the press as best one could, dodging here and dodging there to avoid the heavier phalanxes. For the first hundred paces one proceeds at a walk to the crossways formed by the cutting of the Masaʿa street by the Ghashashiya Road and its continuation along the eastern wall of the Haram to the Hamidiya, or government headquarters. At this point a pilaster set in the wall of the Haram marks the beginning of the section to be covered, according to ancient practice, at the pace known as harwala, a sort of shuffle run. In former times, as in our more spacious days of motors, this crossing carried the main highway of the city, and the shuffle run was doubtless designed as a very necessary aid to traffic. A green pillar on the right-hand side of the Masaʿa, built into a shop wall, marks the end of the harwala section, whose whole length is 53 paces. Here one resumes at a walk for the remaining 306 paces of the course, now a broad street covered over and lined with shops on both sides, to the mound of Marwa, similar to that of Safa and similarly furnished with broad steps and an arched superstructure. The whole of the Masaʿa, roughly 380 yards in length, has during the reign of the present King been cobble paved—a great improvement on the old regime of flying dust and uncleanable, accumulated filth and rubbish which used to make a real penance of the “running.”

During the course the pilgrim repeats the prescribed formulae of the occasion, and at Marwa he turns towards Safa, standing on the steps with upraised hands, to repeat further formulae, after which he descends to return to Safa. Seven times in all, four from Safa to Marwa and three in the reverse direction, one does this course, and at the end of the seventh lap the cere­monies of the great pilgrimage are duly completed, all except the shaving or the haircutting according to choice or tenets, to aid in which an army of barbers throng the Marwa end of the Masaʿa and appear to do a flourishing business. I preferred to do my own hair trimming at home, and having done my course of 2,660 yards—it was now about 9:00 a.m. and getting warm—I was glad enough of my car to take me thither. In all respects my first pilgrimage was duly and faithfully completed, and during the coming days of festival my friends and acquaintances would wish me its “acceptance” and all the blessings implied thereby. I had now duly become a hajji, a title little used in Arabia itself, where most men may be assumed to perform the pilgrimage some time or other in their lives, though it is stated—with some appearance of truth—that there are or have till quite recently been greybeard, lifelong residents of Mecca itself who have never performed this essential rite! It seems incredible, but things have changed since the bad old days of Turk and sharif, when the main functions of the Meccan were to make the pilgrimage as onerous as possible for the stranger within his gates, while he himself avoided the very real dangers and troubles of the pilgrim way.

MINA I remained quietly at home through the heat of the day, and it was not till mid-afternoon that I drove out again in my car to Mina, where I found the King almost alone in his great new audience chamber. Throughout the Muslim world outside the limits of the Meccan territory this day, the Id al-Adha, or the Festival of the Sacrifice in commemoration of the story of Abraham, is celebrated rather than the actual day of Arafat itself. . . .

As for Mecca, the ceremonies which I have already described seem to break up the day in such a way that the usual sunrise service of the festival is either not held at all or held only for the benefit of a small congregation. As far as I am aware, there was no such service in the Haram itself, though those who deferred the tawaf and other Meccan ceremonies doubtless forgathered in the Mina mosque of Khayif. I missed, moreover, the actual ceremony of the sacrificing in the morning, and my personal sacrifice was offered by proxy the following day; but I may add that during these three days at Mina I neither saw nor by other less agreeable processes became aware of the great slaughter on which others have written with so much critical emotion—nor even saw the slaughter place now wisely removed to a reasonable distance from the main camps of the pilgrims and divided therefrom by the picturesque encampment of the human scavengers of the Holy Land—the Takruri colony of African residents and visitors to whom nothing comes amiss that is edible. I certainly saw a few severed sheeps heads lying about where perhaps they should not have been, but otherwise there was neither stench nor offensive sight of sun-grilled putrefactions. The medical authorities have unquestionably done this part of their work exceedingly well, and their reward this year was the smallest death rate on record for the pilgrimage up to date. And the flies, of which we hear so much! Where were they? Certainly not on pilgrimage, as stands to reason—they would come some days later no doubt, when the pilgrims would have made good their departure. But there would be no one for them to worry or infect. The place would be deserted, as it had been till but a few days ago. And to round off the tale of the blessings of Mina—what joy it was to sleep out in the open under that brilliant sky with no protection against the mosquito and no mosquito to molest one’s slumbers! . . .

All day long, and particularly during the grateful coolth of the early mornings and the evenings, the streets of Mina were thronged with a dense multitude moving this way and that. Through it at intervals a heavy motor water van made its deliberate way, clearing a path before it with a broad spray of water mixed with some disinfectant fluid, laying the dust and slaying the germs in a single operation. At one point in the broader part of the street and about midway between the two “devils” a small Petter engine had been installed with an Aquatole chain-pump equipment over a large subterranean cistern (fed at intervals by another water-cart). Round this pressed all day a crowd of the thirsty poor with tins and cans of every shape and size, into which a municipal functionary, presiding aloft at the gushing water outlet, tirelessly and good-humouredly baled the life-giving liquid—sometimes into the tins and sometimes, to the general amusement, over the heads and bodies of the crowd below. . . .

Eastward of the valley beyond the great concourse of pilgrim tents sat Ibn Saʿud in his hall of audience, disposing of the affairs of state, receiving reports and passing orders for the governance of his realm. A telephone connected him with Mecca and Jidda; a branch post-and-telegraph office brought him news from far and wide; the headquarters of the medical administration was housed in the local hospital to keep him in touch with the vital statistics so necessary to the world’s welfare, for the Meccan pilgrimage is the cynosure of a wider audience than Arabia or its pilgrims. Even the Foreign Office was present in full force in attendance on the King. Business as usual was the order of the day, but concentration on the main business of the pilgrimage did not exclude attention to other matters. . . .

And so, on the third day of the festival towards sunset, the last stones were flung and the ceremonies of the great pilgrimage were over. The “devils” were left in peace for another year; and the crowd poured forth from Mina down the valley, an endless stream of men, women, and children, walking or riding, tired but happy, and above all cleansed from the sins of the past—the heavy burden that all had carried in jeopardy until these days.

A woman of the Bedouin, veiled from the gaze of man and modestly muffled in garments that hid her form, trotted gaily through the slowly wending crowd of those who walked and those who rode in litters. Without saddle or bridle she sat back on the lean rump of her dromedary, and I mused, as my car carried me home through the pilgrim streams, that I had seen in her and her surroundings the spirit of Arabia coursing through the veins of Islam.

218 Sir Andrew Ryan, first British Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary to the court of Ibn Saʿud. [Ed.]

219 Yaum al-Tarwiyya: the day before the exodus to Arafat, when pilgrims traditionally supplied themselves with water enough to journey to and from the desert during the Hajj, literally, Watering Day. [Ed.]

220 Takruri: “derived from the verb takurrar, ‘to multiply, to renew, to sift, to purify, to invigorate,’ i.e., their religious sentiments, by study of the sacred book, and by pilgrimage.” (John Lewis Burckhardt, Travels in Nubia, p. 406)

221 General Gordon: Charles George Gordon (1833–85), British soldier and administrator, was governor of the Egyptian Sudan (1877–80). In 1885, while attempting to crush Arab resistance to British rule, he died in the siege of Khartoum. The Mahdi was Muhammad Ahmad (1844–85), a Muslim religious leader in the Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. In 1881, Ahmad declared himself Mahdi, a divinely guided restorer of the faith. His army of followers captured the Sudanese capital, Khartoum, but he died soon after.