Reza Aslan
Mecca.
Long before anyone thought to build a sanctuary here, and centuries before that sanctuary became the focal point of a new religion, pilgrims had been traveling to this desolate stretch of desert wasteland in western Arabia called the Hijaz. No one knows exactly why. There is nothing particularly unique or special about this place, nothing to draw those ancient worshippers here but sand and rock. Despite claims to the contrary in some Islamic chronicles, pre-Islamic Mecca was not the hub of an international trade network. It was not a center of commerce. It did not yield anything. There was, in short, no apparent reason to visit this arid basin, let alone to settle here.
And yet, as far back as the third century CE, if not further, pagan Arabs viewed this wide barren expanse tucked inside the bare mountains of the Hijaz as a kind of axis mundi—a “navel of the universe”—a sacred space that served as the link between the earth and the heavens. They traveled here from every corner of the Arabian Peninsula, some from as far away as Yemen, to commune with the spirit world.
It would be many years later that someone would think to build a sanctuary here—the Kaʿba or “cube”—and many more years afterward that someone would begin housing the gods of pre-Islamic Arabia within it. As the sanctity of Mecca grew, so did the legends associated with it and the Kaʿba. It was said that the original sanctuary was built by Adam, the first man; that it was destroyed by the Great Flood and rediscovered by Noah, before being lost and rediscovered again by Abraham, the father of the three major monotheistic faiths: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Some believed this was the very spot where Abraham nearly sacrificed his first son, Ismail, that this was where Ismail and his mother Hagar were nourished by a natural spring called Zamzam after Abraham abandoned them in favor of his younger son, Isaac, and his mother, Sarah. Some historians suggest Zamzam may have been the original source of Mecca’s sanctity; the Kaʿba was likely built at first merely to house the sanctified objects used in the rituals associated with the sacred spring. Again, no one knows for certain.
What is certain, however, is that by the middle of the sixth century, when the Prophet Muhammad was born, Mecca and its sanctuary had become the religious, political, and economic center of pre-Islamic life in the Arabian Peninsula. No wonder, then, that when the Prophet conquered Mecca in the name of Islam, he emptied the Kaʿba of its idols but kept the sanctuary itself, as well as most of the ancient rituals associated with it, intact. Indeed, many of the Muslim rituals associated with the Kaʿba and the annual Hajj pilgrimage—including the circumambulations around the sanctuary and the running back and forth between the twin hills of Safah and Marwah—have their roots in pre-Islamic practice: a reminder that the mysterious, sacred quality of this mound of earth predates any specific religious symbol or rite.
Today, the Kaʿba is no longer a repository of the gods. It is the manifestation of the one and only God, Allah. The Kaʿba is not a temple in the traditional sense. It has no intrinsic sanctity. It is called “the House of God,” but it houses nothing of architectural or scriptural significance.
Yet for millions of Muslims around the world who continue to walk in the footsteps of the ancient Arab pilgrims who worshipped here, the Kaʿba and the rites associated with it function as a communal meditation on the oneness of God and the unity of the ummah, the worldwide community of Muslims. For nearly fifteen hundred years Muslims have traveled by foot, by camel, by boat, by train, and by plane to this no-longer-desolate but thriving metropolis to experience the transformative nature of the Hajj.
The stories of these pilgrims, enshrined in this indispensable collection, are a treasure trove of memories and experiences about a land, a people, and a faith in a state of constant evolution. Some of these accounts were written by “insiders,” others by “trespassers.” At least half of them are by travelers from the West. The variety of the anthology is a reminder that, while Mecca may be an Arabian city, the Hajj is a global phenomenon, one that has captured the imaginations of people from all over the world and in every era, from the ancient to the medieval and from the medieval to modern. That makes this book more than just a collection of pilgrimage stories. It is a glimpse into an ever-evolving religion and its place in a changing world—a religion with many faces but only one heart.
Mecca.