5
Love and Fratricide in the Holy City
During the first year of the thirteenth century, Meccans were in a celebratory mood. There was a great deal to celebrate. Towards the end of 1195, a black wind appeared from nowhere and engulfed the city. For days red sand rained from the sky. Some in the city thought it was the end of time and Judgement Day was upon them. But the wind disappeared as suddenly as it had arrived, leaving the Sanctuary shaken, with only minor damage to the Kaaba. This was a second deliverance; a decade earlier the city had narrowly escaped the onslaught of the Christian soldiers.
For most of the inhabitants of Mecca, the Crusades were a distant phenomenon. The focal point of the Muslim world was peripheral to the centre of the action; it revolved around Jerusalem, which was considered the centre of the earth by Christians. The stone they called the ‘navel of the earth’ was located there, in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Medieval European map-making, an art that was more a graphic representation of biblical history than geographical, told the same story with Jerusalem as the central point.1 News of battles and victories against the Christians reached Mecca regularly through pilgrims or visitors from Egypt. There were fervent prayers in the Sacred Mosque when Salah-ad-Din succeeded in liberating Jerusalem in 1187. He immediately restored it to the status of an open city where once again Muslims, Jews and Christians could live side by side,2 as they had done during the preceding four and a half centuries of Muslim rule; the way that was common in all the other great cities of the Middle East. Under the eighty-eight-year rule of the Crusaders, Jerusalem had been closed to all but Christians.
Salah-ad-Din’s triumph came just two years after his brother had liberated Mecca from the scourge of the Bedouin spearmen who served the sharifs. No one in Mecca thought the Christian heathens would actually enter the Hijaz. It was unthinkable. This territory had been closed to all but Muslims for more than four centuries, ever since the time of the first Umayyad caliph. Mecca, the earthly facsimile of the celestial realm, was inviolable.
The French knight Reynaud de Châtillon (1125–87) had other ideas.3 A poor knight, he had fought in the Second Crusade, and stayed on to seek his fortune. The Latin Kingdom of Outremer which the Christians had planted in the Middle East was a genuine frontier society, a land of opportunity for those knights who were willing to take the risk and go on Crusade. Reynaud rose to prominence thanks to two fortunate marriages. Outremer seemed to produce an abundance of rich heiresses in need of husbands. By his first marriage he became prince of Antioch. Reynaud was then ambushed and taken prisoner by Muslim forces. He spent fourteen years as a prisoner before being ransomed, during which time he learnt Arabic and Turkish. Once free he found himself a widower in need of another wife. His second marriage brought him land in Outrejordan, indeed the most extensive seigniory in the Latin Kingdom. It contained the castles of Montréal and Kerak, east of the Dead Sea. Strongly fortified castles dominating the surrounding territory were the means by which the Crusaders exerted control over their conquered land and its people. Reynaud was now in possession of two of the finest examples, strategically located astride the pilgrim route to Mecca. From his strongholds he could impede and raid pilgrim caravans with impunity.
Secure in his territory, Reynaud operated as an independent agent, rather than a liege of the king of Jerusalem. He conceived a daring plan. He would attack the heart of Islam itself: the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. The idea was to ransack the cities and steal the body of the Prophet Muhammad from Medina and the treasures of the Kaaba from Mecca. Reynaud began his campaign in 1181 by looting the pilgrim caravan that passed by the castle of Kerak, breaking a truce with Salah-ad-Din, who was ‘so outraged by these actions that he vowed never to forgive him’.4 The Meccans’ previous notions about the Crusades being a distant concern were blown away.
Muslim historians describe Reynaud as a bloodthirsty marauding pirate, which he was, as perfidious to his co-religionists as to his enemies. One of his favourite pastimes was to throw prisoners from the battlements of his castles and watch their bodies break on the rocks below. But he was also an accomplished strategist. He conquered the port of Elat on the Gulf of Aqaba in a surprise attack. Then he took ships from a port in southern Palestine, dismantled them, transported them by camel across the desert, and rebuilt them in Elat. Slowly he mustered an armada of galleys; manoeuvred by oars, these were faster and more mobile than the sailing vessels of the Arabs. He was now able to cut off communication between small Arab ports, capture merchant ships and block transport. During most of 1182, Reynaud’s troops plundered and ravaged villages up and down the Red Sea at will. Further south, they sacked the port of Aydhab, which was an important staging post for pilgrims travelling from the Nile to Mecca. It is even suggested that he thought of sailing beyond the Bab al-Mandab and seeking the spice route to the Indies.5 Then Reynaud’s galleys destroyed a large pilgrim ship on its way to Jeddah. Salah-ad-Din responded in January 1183, by sending a fleet under a commander known for his naval prowess. He put an end to Reynaud’s activities in the Red Sea within two months, burned three of his galleys and captured most of his troops. But a small battalion of Reynaud’s army fought its way inland and was now marching towards Medina.
Estimates vary, but it is thought there were around 300 well-armed men, who were guided towards Medina by the Muslims they captured. After marching across the desert for five days, and camping on a hilltop a few miles from Medina, they were met by Adil ibn Ayyub, the younger brother of Salah-ad-Din. The battle was swift. Around 170 Crusaders survived the encounter and were taken as prisoners. Some were executed at Muna in front of a huge crowd of Meccans. Others were taken to Cairo and humiliated in public. While in Alexandria, it was the first thing that ibn Jubayr saw: ‘a large concourse of people came forth to gaze upon Rumi prisoners being brought to the town on camels, facing the tail and surrounded by timbal and horn’.6
Reynaud himself, who had come to be known in the Muslim world as ‘the Demon of the West’, came to a similar end. Captured in the disastrous rout of the Crusader forces at the Battle of Hattin in 1187, he was brought before Salah-ad-Din. Despite being known for his magnanimity, in this instance the sultan made an exception, and personally beheaded his arch-enemy.
There were other things to celebrate apart from Mecca’s escape from the Crusaders. Selecting the anniversary of the completed rebuilding of the Kaaba by ibn Zubair, the inhabitants of Mecca decided on a day of celebration. It would begin with umra (the lesser pilgrimage), on the 27th of the Islamic month of Rajab 597, corresponding to 2 May 1201. The date was significant for another reason: the day commemorated Prophet Muhammad’s ‘Night Journey’, a vision in which he travelled first to Jerusalem and then ascended to Heaven. To perform the umra, the residents of Mecca had to go to a station outside the city (called the miqat, which marks the boundaries of the holy area), change into pilgrim dress and, after a ritual ablution, re-enter the city as pilgrims. The whole population of Mecca left the city and made their way to the miqat. When they returned as pilgrims, they discovered to their utter amazement that Mecca had been seized by a warrior prince. The city now had a new ruler. His name was Qatada ibn Idris.
A descendant of the Hashims, Qatada was said to be a tall, slim and honourable man, known for both his devotion and his bravery. It is possible that he had participated in the rout of Reynaud’s soldiers near Medina, and after the battle he simply marched with troops to an empty Mecca. He had just turned seventy. There was an obligatory attempt by Sharif Mikhthar’s son, with the help of the emir of Medina, to regain the city. It proved futile. The new ruler of Mecca was a man of considerable political skills and his ambitions were not limited to Mecca. He wanted to rule the entire Hijaz and make the region an independent territory as so many other parts of the Muslim world had done over the course of time. Within two years he had reduced Medina to obedience and captured Taif and other towns in the region. He turned out to be a strong and fiercely independent ruler, and the ancestor of all later sharifs. Qatada brought peace and prosperity to Mecca for ten years.
That the city was in a state of relative calm was exceptionally fortunate. It had a renowned visitor who needed amity and quiet for his extraordinary works. Muhyi Din ibn Arabi was already known as al-Sheikh al-Akbar (The Supreme Master) throughout Muslim lands when he came to perform the Hajj in 1202. Born in the Andalusian town of Murcia in 1165 and educated in Seville, he is said to have gone into seclusion when he was sixteen. By the time he was in his mid-twenties, he had acquired a reputation for intense spirituality and commanding imagination. His three years’ stay in Mecca provided the inspiration for many of his works, including the monumental thirty-seven volumes of Meccan Revelations,7 which attempts to unearth the mystical mysteries of the Hajj and develops (yet another) metaphysical edifice around the city.
Ibn Arabi was a visionary in the literal sense. He had visions, and lots of them. His deeply textured writings tend to be both a product and an exploration of his visions. Rich in symbolism, ibn Arabi is an allusive and complex writer, sometimes almost impossible to fathom, often taxing the interpretative skills of the most accomplished scholars. In Mecca he had a number of visions, the most important his encounter with the Kaaba. In this vision, ibn Arabi saw himself going around the Kaaba when he noticed that the Kaaba ‘was pushing me with itself and pushing me away from circumambulation of it and threatening me with words which I could hear with my ears’. He was so alarmed that he could not move. Then, ‘gathering its tail and getting ready to rise from its foundations and into itself’, the Kaaba began to speak. It said to him: ‘Advance so that you can see what I will do to you! How you lower my power and elevate the power of the Banu Adam [humanity]. You prefer the agnostics over me. Might belongs to the one who has might. I will not let you circumambulate me.’ Alarmed, ibn Arabi tries to hide and shield himself. ‘When I saw it leap from its place, gathering its garment about it, it also seemed to me that it drew its veils onto itself in order to attack me and it was in a moving form.’ The mystic tries to appease the Kaaba by writing some verses in its praise: ‘It showed happiness at what I let it hear until it reverted to its previous state.’8
The vision leads ibn Arabi to conclude that the true symbolism of the Kaaba, the Sacred Mosque, various rites of the Hajj and the significance of Mecca is not appreciated by the vast majority of Muslims. They come in their hundreds of thousands to the Sacred City but they do not visit it. They do not see what they come to gaze at. They do not feel what they have come to experience. They remain untouched by the true celestial dimensions of the city. The point is illustrated in a long story told from the perspective of an ordinary pilgrim who encounters a saint. The saint asks him:
‘Have you looked at Mecca?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. He further asked: ‘Has a state from The Real looked at you by your looking at Mecca?’ ‘No,’ I admitted. He said: ‘You have not looked at Mecca.’
‘Did you enter the Masjid al-Haram?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. He said: ‘When you entered the Masjid al-Haram, did you believe that you had left every forbidden thing?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘You did not enter.’
‘Have you seen the Kaaba?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. He asked: ‘Did you see what you intended?’ ‘No,’ I replied. He said: ‘Then you have not seen the Kaaba.’
‘Have you removed your garment?’ ‘Yes,’ I replied. He asked me: ‘Have you stripped yourself of everything?’ ‘No,’ I replied. He replied: ‘You have not removed them.’9
The story takes us through all the sites of Mecca and every single ritual of the Hajj to illustrate that the actions of most Muslims are mechanical and without spiritual significance. In the rest of the book, ibn Arabi reveals the multiple layers of meaning and significance of each site and rite, and explores the symbolism of the Hajj at great length. Thus, the circumambulation of the Kaaba is like going round the Throne of God. The Black Stone is the right hand of God on earth; to touch it is to touch the Real and be changed for ever. Running between the hills of Safa and Marwah is an act of supreme compassion; it is running ‘from God to God with God by God’.
After one has gone through countless allegories, numerous abstract poems, elusive prose, and been perplexed and dazzled by an elaborate system of coded imagery, ibn Arabi suggests that visiting Mecca and the Sacred Mosque is like visiting your own house. The House of God in Mecca, he writes, is like yours, and:
of your genus, that is, it is created. So His directing you to the House is His directing you to yourself in His words: ‘Whosoever knows himself knows His Lord.’ Therefore when you make for the House, you make for yourself. When you reach yourself, you recognize who you are. When you recognize who you are, you recognize your Lord, and at that you know whether you are He or you are not He. There you acquire sound knowledge.10
To look at Mecca, ibn Arabi seems to be suggesting, is to look into a Divine mirror: it reflects the divinity within you and the reflection can guide you towards becoming a ‘perfect’ person with true knowledge of God. For ibn Arabi the image of the mirror is of fundamental importance; it is an integral part of his overall philosophy of the Unity of Being (wahdat al-wujud), in which God and His creation are united and the only truth within the universe is God.
Not everyone in Mecca was impressed by ibn Arabi’s symbolic, speculative and visionary analysis. The four schools of Islamic legal thought were well represented in the city and they took exception to his ‘Unity of Being’ thesis. There were murmurs of heresy. Some traditional scholars made their feelings known by deliberately mispronouncing his name, effortlessly slurring their way from Muhyi al-Din (the reviver of religion) to Mahi al-din or Mumit al-din (the eraser or slayer of religion). Ibn Arabi himself was above such banalities. Besides, he had other preoccupations. Before arriving in Mecca, he had spent virtually all his life in spiritual occupations and pursuit of divine love. The city had so profound an effect on him that later scholars were to divide his life into pre-Meccan and post-Meccan periods. In Mecca, he not only wrote Meccan Revelations but also the first chapters of his other masterpiece Futūḥāts and sections of numerous other books. And in Mecca he found love of a more earthly nature. He became infatuated with the beautiful daughter of his host. Naturally, she became his personification of beauty and wisdom and inspired him to produce a whole volume of poetry. Interpreter of Desires11 is a wonderful work, less opaque than his mystical outpourings; it pays homage to the tradition of early Arabic poetry. It had most of the trade-mark symbolism of ibn Arabi but much use was made of customary Arabic imagery of the desert and numerous names for the beloved:
O Marvel! A bower amidst the flames,
My heart is now capable of every form,
A meadow it is for gazelles, for monks a monastery;
A shrine for idols, for pilgrims the very Kaaba;
The tables of the Torah, the book of the Qur’an.
Love is my faith. Wherever its camels may roam,
There is found my religion, my faith.12
The young and flirty on the streets of Mecca, not too concerned with Meccan Revelations, devoured Interpreter of Desires. And they read and enjoyed it, to the dismay of ibn Arabi, purely in secular, physical terms. Indeed, they were programmed to do so. For behind all the political turmoil and violence that charts the course of history, Mecca had a thriving cultural scene with love poetry at its core. When ibn Zubair was defending the city from Yazid’s troops, Mecca was in the midst of another revolution. Pre-Islamic poetry was being transformed into something radically different. A whole new genre of love poetry known as ghazal, consisting of rhyming couplets and a refrain, with each line sharing the same metre, was being invented. The chief architect of the new genre was the Quraysh poet Umar ibn Abi Rabia (d. 712).13 Umar’s unrestrained poetry was the rage of the city; later, he was to acquire such a reputation that the adjective ‘Umari’ was used to refer to uninhibited Hijazi ghazals. The form travelled, adopted in languages and cultures far from Arabia that looked to Mecca for inspiration. It is the glory of Urdu poetry, on which I was raised. Ghazals eventually found their way into Bollywood movies of the classic era, the 1950 and 60s, when renowned poets provided the lyrics for the essential musical interludes and in the very best films made them constructive elements in the storytelling rather than the mindless ditties that seem to be in favour these days.
Umar, whose ghazals were largely based on his own experiences, was not interested in the longing of hopeless lovers – the classic theme of ghazals, developed by his contemporary Hijazi poet, Jamil (d. 701). In Jamil’s poems hopeless lovers pine for each other, seldom meet or consummate their love, and frequently end up dying of unfulfilled desire. This is a general theme not just of Arabic poetry but also of Persian, Turkish and Urdu ghazals. For Umar there was already too much pain and sorrow in Mecca. He was much more interested in the joy of love, the unbridled embrace of lovers leading to consummation of their love. In classical Arabic poetry the story is always told in the past tense. For Umar love exists in the present, it is a game with many hurdles, but with forbidden – and hence more desirable – rewards.14 Meccans may look up to jurists and religious scholars, but the city, as Umar emphasizes, has other heroes: young men looking for sexual conquests. He is often the hero of his poems, the handsome young man no woman can resist. When on rare occasions lovers actually meet in classical Arabic poetry, the scene is closed at their meeting and the rest is left to the imagination. In contrast, Umar has his characters stripping, revealing the play of two young lovers, and goes on to show how they avoid being caught and manage to escape undetected after their meeting:
Behind me they dragged the hems of their garments,
of soft material,
so that the footsteps should not be discovered.15
Apart from the two lovers, the narratives often have a third person, the confidant who shares the secret, arranges the meeting, and helps them break out of precarious situations. In one of his poems, the collaborator is his lover’s maid, who aids his escape disguised as a woman. The Hajj caravans brought pilgrims to Mecca; but they also brought young women. And Umar and his young companions were often found ‘standing on the corner, watching all the [pilgrim] girls go by’. Once they spotted their mark, they would follow them:
I spotted her at night walking with her women between the shrine and the [Black] Stone.
‘Well then’, she said to a companion, ‘for Umar’s sake let us spoil this circumambulation.
Go after him so that he may spot us, then, sweet sister, give him a coy wink.’
‘But I already did,’ she said, ‘and he turned away.’
Whereupon she came rushing after me.16
Clearly, Umar’s poetry had a direct appeal to young men in the Holy City. Their popularity was considerably enhanced by their conversational tone and accessibility. The city’s young men were eager to follow the example of Umar. Since his popularity endured it was inevitable that young men tried to read ibn Arabi’s more opaque offerings in the same vein. The problem he faced was not simply that this constituted an unholy reading of Interpreter of Desires. It was that, just like the ghazals of Umar, it was set to music.
By the time of ibn Arabi, the theory of music was highly advanced in the Muslim world. It was their interest in mathematics that led Muslim philosophers and thinkers to music, and for many it was not just a source of entertainment but had a medicinal purpose: it could be used to calm the soul and temper the spirit. Learned men in Mecca were well aware of studies on music by al-Kindi (d. 873), the Iraqi who is known as ‘the First Arab Philosopher’, who wrote on the cosmological aspect of music; and the other great philosopher of Baghdad of this era, al-Farabi (d. 950), whose The Grand Book of Music (Kitāb al-musīqī al-Kabīr) provides a comprehensive account of the principal melody instruments then in use and the scales produced by them.17 Students in Mecca were also poring over the work of the great Persian polymath ibn Sina (d. 1037). His Canons of Medicine contained a masterly section on the therapeutic properties of music.18 A musical treatise by his student ibn Zola (d. 1048) was being circulated in the city. So educated young men in Mecca appreciated both the theory (musiqa) and practice (ghina, the art of singing) of music.
Great musicians were an integral part of the Umayyad and Abbasid courts. They incorporated influences from Byzantine and Persian musical practice, and quite a few of these virtuoso singers and instrumentalists – who are known to us only by their names: ibn Misjah (d. 710?), ibn Muhriz (d. 715), ibn Surayj (d. 726), Mabad (d. 743) – came to perform the Hajj and stayed for some time to give performances in the houses of wealthy Meccans. Often they left students behind who in turn became master musicians performing on the outskirts of the city for rich patrons. Away from the Sacred Mosque, Mecca had a vibrant and energetic music scene. Umar’s poems were regularly and playfully performed at such gatherings. Now, ibn Arabi’s Interpreter of Desires became part of the repertoire. It was being sung by famous musical interpreters, and given a decidedly secular tone. This was nothing short of a scandal, and the traditional scholars used it as an argument to denounce ibn Arabi’s mystical philosophy.
Horrified by the abuse of his poem, ibn Arabi was forced to write a detailed commentary on Interpreter of Desires, showing that each line had multiple layers of meaning, and pointing out that his ‘beloved’ was nothing like Umari’s lovers but served as a symbol of divine beauty. Just to prove his point he abandoned the pursuit of the daughter of his host and married another Meccan woman, Fatima bint Yunus.
Despite the scandals and accusations of heresy he faced in Mecca, ibn Arabi was totally enamoured with the city, around which he built a grand metaphysics and philosophy that still enthrals people today. He was smitten by the Meccans: ‘The land of Mecca is the best land of God,’ he wrote, and the best land of God could only produce the most worthy of all people. Meccans are ‘the neighbours of God and the people of his House, and they are the closest creation to the firsts of the places of worship. So God gives them a Self-disclosure in His name, The First, and only the people of the Haram obtain this self-disclosure. They rival in that according to the principle of worthiness.’19
Given his passionate attachment to the city, it is not surprising to find ibn Arabi arguing in Meccan Revelations that the dispute between Mecca and Medina about which city is the most worthy is rather trite. Both are virtuous cities. But Mecca has no parallel:
O Medinan! The excellence of your land is above the lands
but the excellence of Mecca is greater,
A land which contains the Sacred House as a qibla
for the worlds to which the mosques turn.
He made a Haram of its land and its game
although game is lawful in every land.
There are all the waymarks, signs and practices
and mankind travels to its excellence . . .
So seek your emir and visit him and do not attack a city
which is immense, and it is better for you to be warned.
God drives rain to the valley of Mecca
and you are slaked by it and it drops to Medina.20
The problem with mystics is that, drunk on Divine Love, they tend to roam about with their eyes closed. Mecca may have been worthy but Meccans were something else. And, as things had been, so they would be again. I have to admit that the deeper I venture into the history of the real place rather than the idealized city of the celestial realm, the more sympathy I have for the Qarmatian theory of never-ending unreformed groundhog days. Mystics intoxicated by their beautiful visions might come and go; the city they left behind would live on in the old familiar pattern. Qatada might have succeeded in his policy of ruling Mecca in splendid isolation but for two things: his treatment of the Iraqi pilgrims and his sons. There were incidents between the Meccans and the Iraqi pilgrims in 1210 and again in 1212.
Accompanying the pilgrim caravan of 1212 was Rabia Khatoon, sister of Adil ibn Ayyub, and the mother of Salah-ad-Din. In Muna, during the ceremonial throwing of stones, Ismaili assassins – who had been active in the region for several decades, murdering various leaders and personalities in pursuit of their religious and political goals – surrounded a sharif, a cousin of Qatada, who resembled him. Believing him to be Qatada, they killed him. When Qatada heard the news, he was incensed. He gathered his African bodyguards, climbed the hills on either side of Muna and began to catapult and shoot arrows. The next day he looted the pilgrims. There were casualties on both sides. The leader of the caravan was advised to move the pilgrims from Muna to the usual pilgrim camping ground near to one of the main gates into Mecca, the al-Zahir Gate. This move was interpreted by Qatada as a sign that the pilgrims were about to fight; he launched a pre-emptive attack and killed hundreds of pilgrims. ‘As I was meant to be killed I will not leave one of them alive,’21 he declared.
The desperate caravan leader took them to the safest refuge he could think of: the camp of Rabia Khatoon. She summoned Qatada and asked imperiously what crime he supposed the pilgrims to have committed. Or was he using the murder of his relative merely as an excuse to loot the caravan? Confronted by a matriarch of the Ayyubid dynasty, Qatada agreed to cease hostilities, but only if the pilgrims paid him 100,000 dinars in compensation. Around 30,000 dinars were actually collected for him from the pilgrims, with a significant contribution from Rabia. Hundreds of people remained around her tent for three days to be sure of her protection, ‘being many of them hungry, wounded, naked, and some of them dying. Qatada was convinced that the assassination had been planned by the Caliphs, and so he swore to kill any pilgrims from Baghdad the next year.’22
Despite his oath, or perhaps because of it, the following year Qatada sent his son Rijal to Baghdad with an apology. The caliph forgave his transgression and sent a great quantity of gifts and money. Qatada was invited to visit Baghdad. In fact he went as far as Kufa before having second thoughts and returning to Mecca – sending another apology, this time in verse, to the caliph.
The entire thrust of centuries of religious fervour, thought and poetry had been to convince Muslims that Mecca was different, a place not so much apart as exalted above all others. There was, however, one regard in which Mecca was neither different from the rest of the Muslim world nor a place showing any inkling of divine peace: the quest for power. Here indeed Mecca was a mirror, a reflection of earthly realities. Nothing demonstrates this better than the period that ended Qatada’s rule, in 1220, and its aftermath. By now he was ninety, and his health was failing rapidly. The succession was disputed by all of his eight sons, although Qatada himself favoured Rijal. However, it was the eldest, Hassan, who took the initiative. First, he murdered an uncle, who might have been a rival. Then, he smothered his father with a pillow. Another brother who was in Yanbu was invited to Mecca and murdered. All the remaining brothers fled the country – except Rijal.
Next Hassan killed the emir of an Iraqi pilgrim caravan and hung his head from a waterspout in the Sacred Mosque on suspicion that he had come to support his brother Rijal. But Hassan’s ambition to rule Mecca was thwarted by the Ayyubid prince al-Masud (also known as Aqsis), who was then the viceroy of Yemen. While Hassan was murdering and driving his brothers out of the Holy City, al-Masud intervened and attacked Hassan inside the city. Hassan fled and the viceroy of Yemen remained in the city for seven years. When al-Masud died in 1228, one of his lieutenants established his authority. Hassan, who had gathered an army from Yanbu, attacked the Yemeni forces in Mecca in an attempt to regain the city, but he was defeated, retreated to Baghdad and died there without ever returning to Mecca.
It was now Rijal’s turn to try and regain his father’s inheritance. His first attempt in 1229 failed. He was successful in 1232, but had to flee again the following year. For the next two decades, the ruler of Mecca changed on an almost yearly basis, with Egyptians, Syrians, Yemenis and the sharifs all vying with each other for control of the Holy City. It must have been the rulers of Mecca who, a century later, inspired ibn Khaldun, the Arab historian and founder of sociology, to produce his grand theory. History repeats itself in cycles, ibn Khaldun wrote in his seminal work Introduction to History;23 every cycle repeats and replicates the folly of what went before – a far more elegant and sophisticated statement of the groundhog principle.
Despite political turmoil, the city had a constant stream of visitors who observed and recorded these follies. Fortunately, not all the visitors to Mecca were preoccupied with the Machiavellian politics of the city or its obscurantist religious rituals. When the Persian ibn al-Mujawir visited Mecca, between 1226 and 1230, he was more concerned with people than politics. Ibn al-Mujawir was probably from Khorasan, knew the eastern provinces of the Muslim world well and harboured literary ambitions. Unlike most Muslim travellers of this age, he was not a scholar, a jurist or a deep religious thinker. He was clearly a very devout person. His main interests were trade and commerce, and apart from performing the Hajj he had no interest in the religious significance or rituals of the city. He focused his attention on the social customs, markets and currencies, and stories about magic and the bizarre. A man with a wicked sense of humour, ibn al-Mujawir described himself as a ‘historical geographer’. The account of his travels, Tarikh al-Mustabsir,24 written in rhymed prose, provides a fascinating insight into social life in the Holy City and its surrounding areas during the first half of the thirteenth century.
Unlike ibn Arabi, ibn al-Mujawir found the Meccans to be people of little integrity. The inhabitants, he tells us, are ‘dusky people since most of their partners are black slave girls from Abyssinia and Nubia. They are physically tall, speak correctly, are poor but belong to numerous families and tribes and are content.’25 It is the anthropological detail of his account that fascinates and tantalizes. For example, he notes that the attire of the Meccans is made of fine Nishapuri cloth of silk and linen and that their womenfolk wear bonnets. Given the perennial debate about what constitutes hijab, often referred to as the veil, or otherwise the form of headdress that fulfils the contentious question of appropriate ‘Islamic’ dress, it would have been useful if ibn al-Mujawir had given a clearer indication of just what he meant by ‘bonnets’. He was more concerned to inform his readers that far from being beautiful, Meccan women have large buttocks ‘since they increase them in size on purpose’ and because they are ‘constantly being on all-fours’26 – one presumes, scrubbing the floor or gratifying the desires of the generations who followed in the footsteps of Umar ibn Abi Rabia.
In a town a couple of miles from Mecca called al-Mahalib, ibn al-Mujawir discovers women who only wear leather: ‘the woman takes two pieces of leather and stitches them together, cuts a round hole in it and puts it on. When she walks, the whole of her body can be seen, above and below.’ This would be consistent with his comment about people being poor. However, it also throws light on the opinion of classical commentaries on the Qur’an. The recitation asks women to ‘draw their head-coverings over their bosoms’,27 leading to the interpretation that the objective is to cover their nakedness, rather than to shroud themselves in the all-concealing black shroud, the abaya, that is familiar to us today. The problem of women achieving modest attire, seemingly, was still evident in the thirteenth century.
Throughout Tarikh al-Mustabsir, ibn al-Mujawir uses two imaginary characters – Zayd and Amr – to illustrate the customs of the people and tribes he encounters. So he tells us that ‘When Zayd becomes engaged to the daughter of Amr’ in Mecca, ‘all those getting married go into their wives publicly and making a show.’ And why is this? We learn that because the population of Mecca are all involved with the pilgrims, their social lives are suspended during the period of Hajj. It is when the pilgrims leave that people continue their engagements, family festivals and marriage celebrations. The grooms can’t wait, so they have sex at engagement – before they are actually married. A marriage begins with agreeing the amount of dowry to be paid to the woman. Ibn al-Mujawir tells us that it is the man who ‘dyes his hands and feet in a decorative manner’ to signify the forthcoming marriage. I had always thought this practice was specific to women. It is certainly so in the Indian subcontinent, where the mehndi ceremony is preceded by a gathering of women where the bride sits patiently while intricate designs are drawn on hands and feet with henna. She then sits even more patiently waiting for them to dry.
The families of the bride and groom gather, and each member brings a piece of paper on which is written the name of the guest, together with the weight and number of everything they intend to present to the bridegroom, ‘each according to their situation and financial means. The women do the same.’ The bridegroom then goes to the Sacred Mosque, performs the circumambulations and other rituals, and with a candle in his hand goes to ‘the house of the bride and she is revealed to him. He consummates the marriage and remains with her for seven days.’ On the seventh day he leaves, collects all the money he has been promised, and uses it as a working capital: ‘immediately he opens a shop from which he can earn his living’. This customary practice is familiar in many parts of the world. It is what anthropologists call mutual reciprocity, and as such is an essential part of tribal solidarity. The bridegroom is not receiving largesse, he is obligated to repay his relatives at the time of their marriage ‘the same amount which they gave to him or even more’.28
In nearby al-Mahalib, the marriage customs are stranger.
If Zayd asks for Amr’s daughter in marriage and the later gives a positive response, Zayd goes into Amr’s daughter and deflowers her, remaining with her all night. In the morning he departs, leaving his shoes in the daughter’s room, so that Amr knows that Zayd finds her pleasing. The marriage contract is then drawn up. But if he puts on his shoes and leaves, Amr knows that Zayd is not pleased with his daughter. This happens even now amongst the most distinguished of them.29
While there is no reason to doubt ibn al-Mujawir’s description, it is clear that he does not have a very high regard for the inhabitants of Mecca. Compared with the sophisticated cosmopolitanism of Baghdad (he uses the appellation ‘al-Baghdadi’ to indicate he lived in the city for some time) or the cultured ways of Persia, he finds the Meccans to be philistines, mired in their tribal customs and lacking in basic decencies. Sometimes he is direct in his condemnation. ‘There is no one in the whole world more foul-smelling, more negligent, more sinful and viler than these people in taking the wealth of the pilgrims,’ he writes. They call pilgrims ‘God’s begging bowl!’
If you say to one of them, ‘God cut off your sustenance which you have which is unlawful,’ he will reply, ‘No, rather God cut off any sustenance which you have which is lawful. You can see the only goodness we have is these black mountains; we have no agriculture, no livestock, no income and nothing to give away . . . So God has given us the advantage over you in this region, so that we get back what is just for the pilgrims among you and a third of what is unjust.’30
Somehow it seems that the spirituality of living in a celestial realm is lost on the inhabitants of Mecca.
At times he brings out the devious practices of the Meccans by simple statements of facts, like his observation that the standard of measurement used in the city changes slightly during the time of pilgrimage to the benefit of the Meccans. And sometimes he subverts his observation by sly commentary, often told as a story. Just outside Mecca, he tells us, is a place called Maqtalat al-Kalib (meaning place where dogs are killed). ‘The reason for this name is that there was a dog belonging to a certain Bedouin and the dog attacked a man of the village, bit him and made him blind in one eye. So the man killed the dog. Whereupon the owner of the dog assembled his paternal relatives, while the man bitten assembled his people and war broke out between the two parties. They continued fighting until they were all killed. So the place became known as Maqtalat al-Kilab.’31
It is possible that the place where dogs were killed did not actually exist. Ibn al-Mujawir may be using the story as an allegory for the political machinations in Mecca. Despite the sacred nature of the city, there was nothing hallowed or commendable about the political and social behaviour of its inhabitants. The sharifs were anything but what their title suggested: noble and humane. One ruler after another invaded Mecca, forced out the incumbent, ruled by force and terror, and, after a short period, was driven out himself by a new sharif. Rijal was ensconced as the ruler of Mecca on no fewer than eight separate occasions. Forget musical poetry, this was political control as an often bloody game of musical chairs. Political stability, after a fashion, was introduced in 1254 when Muhammad Abu Nomay acquired power. Abu Nomay I, as he came to be known, was a stocky man with a dark complexion who was highly respected by the Meccans for his five qualities: honour, generosity, patience, courage and poetry. He preferred the desert to the mosque and ruled Mecca firmly but justly, sometimes in cooperation with his son and sometimes in alliance with the emir of Medina, for nearly fifty years. Mecca needed the steadiness he brought.
He came to power at a crucial time. In the middle of the thirteenth century the entire world of Islam changed drastically. In 1258, news reached Mecca of the sacking of Baghdad. The Mongol horde, under the command of Hulagu Khan, swept out of Central Asia like an immense force of nature, devastating everything in their path. It was a human tidal wave of destruction that had worldwide ramifications. Mecca greeted the news with mixed feelings. There was shock at the collapse of the Caliphate in Baghdad, at reports that the caliph and his sons were killed and that the entire city was in flames. The obvious fact that no pilgrims would now be coming from Iraq was of specific concern – indeed, the pilgrim caravan from Baghdad did not come for the next nine years. However, given the antagonistic relationship Mecca had enjoyed over the years with Baghdad there was also some relief at the demise of the Baghdad Caliphate. The Iraqi caravans, when they resumed, would no longer be of political significance.
A political earthquake had also taken place in Cairo, where power passed from the Ayyubids to the Mamluks. Egypt was now ruled by former slaves, who had served as professional soldiers both in the Abbasid as well as the Ayyubid regimes. And of particular interest for Mecca was the news that az-Zahir Rukn-ad-Din Baybars al-Bandaqdari, the Mamluk king of Egypt (r. 1260–77), was coming to perform the Hajj.
Baybars was a towering figure.32 Tall, with a commanding voice, he was highly energetic, very fond of travel and always on the move. Born in the Crimea, he was bought as a slave when a young boy. His first master quickly sold him because he was said to have had a minor defect, possibly a cataract, in one of his blue eyes. He grew up to become a bodyguard to an Ayyubid ruler and went on to become the commander of a Mamluk army. He was responsible for the crippling defeat on the Seventh Crusade of King Louis IX of France. The Crusaders had determined to confront the centre of effective power in the Middle East by attacking Egypt directly. Landing at Damietta on the Nile, Louis was eventually captured after the Battle of Fariskur in 1250, where his army was annihilated. Ransomed for a huge sum of money, he withdrew to Acre, before returning to France. While Louis was to take the Cross once again in 1270 in the abortive Eighth Crusade, his confrontation with Baybars is seen as sealing the demise of the Latin Kingdom of Outremer. Its cities fell one by one: Antioch in 1268, Tripoli in 1289 and the last outpost, Acre, in 1291.
Almost two hundred years of conflict had made a decisive impact on Europe. The Crusades were not separate military adventures but an all-embracing social and cultural movement that shaped Europe’s view of itself and the wider world. It was a period of intense exchange when accurate information about the learning of the Muslim world passed into Europe. The universities, an idea borrowed from the Muslims which spread across Europe, taught the works of the great Muslim scholars whose names became familiar in Latinized form. Supporting the idea of Crusade in Europe was a sophisticated work of propaganda that also disseminated an immense amount of disinformation about Islam, its Prophet and Mecca as the common currency of popular literary works and understanding. The legacy of these perverse views did not evaporate with the end of the Latin Kingdom or Europe’s military adventures into the Middle East: their cultural fallout is with us still. In the thirteenth century it fuelled the animosity that made the enemy of one’s enemy seem a potential friend. Christian missionaries were dispatched to try and make common cause between the Crusaders and the Mongols, though effective coordination was never attained. Again it was Baybars, leading the vanguard of the Mamluk army, who is credited with halting the advance of the Mongol horde at the Battle of Ain Jalut in 1260, the year he assumed the Sultanate of Egypt.
When he visited Mecca, in 1269, Baybars was at the height of his power; indeed, the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world. He arrived with immense largesse, distributed generously to the inhabitants of Mecca, as well as pilgrims. He also brought a new cover for the Kaaba – the kiswa – with his name embroidered in it. It is said that flowers were brought from Egypt every day during his stay. Baybars tried his best to patch up the differences within the ruling family of the Holy City. He regarded Abu Nomay as an energetic and competent ruler and was happy to leave the government of Mecca in his hands. So while swathes of the Muslim world were still reeling from the upheavals caused by the arrival of the Mongol terror, Mecca was insulated by its peripheral location. Indeed it was a beneficiary of the power and bounty that marshalled the Muslim riposte to the Mongol invasion.
Despite all his qualities, Abu Nomay I also had, by some accounts, thirty rather bad features: his sons. Just before his death, he abdicated in favour of two of them: Humaidha and Rumaitha. The old man died peacefully – a rare occurrence amongst Meccan rulers – at the age of seventy, in 1301. He was buried in a Meccan cemetery that was established as the burial place in the city for the sharifs. No sooner had a cupola been built over his tomb, than war broke out between his sons.
Of Abu Nomay’s thirty sons, four actually ruled Mecca at one time or another: Abul Ghaith, Utayfa, Humaidha and Rumaitha. The story of the conflict between brothers is rather complex, but simply put, this is what happened. Humaidha was not too happy to share power with his brother Rumaitha, according to the arrangement made by their father. He was also concerned about challenges from his siblings. So in 1314 he killed Abul Ghaith. He took the body, it is reported, to his own house and invited all his brothers to dinner. When they arrived and sat down for dinner a slave bodyguard stood behind each with sword drawn. The main dish on the menu was the body of their brother, Abul Ghaith, cooked whole. Some of Humaidha’s brothers got the message and fled the Hijaz. Some regrouped and vowed to kill Humaidha. In the end, Humaidha himself had to flee.
He took refuge with the Mongol ruler in Iraq. By now the Mongols had converted to Islam. The old familiar Meccan lure, the promise of a mention in the Friday khutba to confer and publish a mantle of legitimacy before the whole Muslim world, was all that Humaidha needed to obtain his support. So, in 1318, Humaidha returned to Mecca with a Mongol army and took over the city. Immediately, the name of the Mamluk king of Egypt, al-Nasir Nasir-ad-Din Muhammad, was dropped and replaced with that of Abu Said Khurbandr, the Mongol in Baghdad. As one would expect, it did not please Sultan al-Nasir. He dispatched an army to arrest Humaidha, who managed to escape from Mecca just in time. This left a vacancy in Mecca which was instantly filled by Utayfa, who had been in Egypt. The sultan’s army eventually caught Humaidha two years later, in 1320, and executed him. Utayfa, honouring the wishes of his father, agreed to become co-ruler of Mecca with Rumaitha. The two ruled peacefully for a few years.
Once again, Mecca thrived, thanks largely to the rivalry that unleashed the generosity of kings and emperors rather than their wrath. Abu Said Khurbandr tried to regain the favour of the Meccans. He showered the city with gold and cash. Not to be outdone, al-Nasir increased the supply of wheat and corn, which were particularly welcomed during a time of famine. Then, in 1325, came Mansa Musa, the emperor of Mali in West Africa, who outshone all the rest in munificence. Mansa Musa’s kingdom, with its capital in Timbuktu, a city noted for its scholars and learned men, controlled trade with the goldfields that supplied the bulk of that precious metal circulating in the Western world.33 He travelled across Africa to join the pilgrim caravans in Cairo, and arrived in Mecca to a sensational welcome. He is said to have taken as many as 60,000 fellow pilgrims with him, along with hundreds of camels loaded with gold.
Exactly how much gold is much disputed amongst scholars. ‘Some say 100 camels laden with gold, or no camels but 150 kilograms of gold, or 500 slaves carrying 6 pounds of gold each, plus 300 camels with 300 pounds of gold, or 500 slaves each carrying a rod of 2 kilograms of gold.’34 However much gold Mansa Musa had with him, his generosity knew no bounds and he treated everyone, Meccans and pilgrims, ruler and ordinary citizens, with equal respect and dignity, showering them with gifts. The behaviour and politeness of his black followers made a special impression on the Meccans. They were particularly taken aback by his appearance: he had a pale complexion, which to the Meccans appeared almost red and yellow, giving the African monarch a distinctive look. And, unlike most other monarchs who visited Mecca, Mansa Musa had no political motive. He was there simply to perform the pilgrimage, and when he had fulfilled his religious duty, he left – considerably lighter in load, but accompanied by an Andalusian poet he had met in Mecca and to whom he had become attached. More importantly he also recruited an Andalusian architect to return with him to Mali. The grand palace the architect constructed is no more, but the Djinguereber Mosque he also built stands to this day in Timbuktu.
Such was the golden bounty distributed by Mansa Musa that the value of gold depreciated for a decade in the region from Cairo to Mecca. News of this golden pilgrimage spread not only throughout the Muslim world but was carried into Europe as well, where it gave birth to the legend of the golden city of Timbuktu. This fabled city in the heart of Africa stirred European adventurers almost as much as the lure of the forbidden city of Mecca. The mystery of its location was not resolved until the latter half of the nineteenth century, when the mud-brick buildings of this ancient university city proved not to be roofed in gold after all.
The bounty of Mansa Musa was a hard act to follow. The following year Abu Said Khurbandr tried a different tactic. He sent an elephant to Mecca. It was given a guided tour of the Sanctuary, and persuaded to perform all the rites of the Hajj, including the ritual circumambulation. Then, it was sent off to the City of the Prophet to visit his Mosque and tomb, and the poor animal died at the gateway of Medina.
In the wake of the elephant from the ‘Tartar king’ and Mansa Musa came the renowned Tunisian explorer ibn Battuta. He visited Mecca five times, between 1325 and 1354, performing the Hajj on each occasion, and spending up to a year in the city. During his first visit, he tells us in Travels (Rihlah),35 Mecca was ruled by two brother sharifs: Rumaitha, who thought of himself as ‘the Sword of Religion’, and Utayfa, who described himself as ‘the Lion of Religion’. Utayfa lived near the Sanctuary in a house by the hill of Marwah, while his older brother, Rumaitha, lived in a convent in the outskirts of the city near the Gate of Bani Shayba. Every morning, drums were beaten, for a considerable length of time, at the doors of the two rulers. Ibn Battuta found Mecca to be ‘a large town, compactly built and oblong in shape, situated in the hollow of a valley which is so shut that the visitor to her sees nothing of her until he actually reaches her’.36
Ibn Battuta confirms many of the observations of ibn Jubayr, made exactly 142 years earlier, particularly about the Sacred Mosque and the ceremonies surrounding the Friday prayers and the khutab. In sharp contrast to ibn al-Mujawir, he found ‘the citizens of Mecca are given to well-doing, of consummate generosity and good disposition, liberal to the poor and to those who have renounced the world, and kindly towards strangers’. The inhabitants are elegant and clean in their dress, and as they mostly wear white their garments always appear spotless and snowy. They use perfume freely, paint their eyes with kohl, and are constantly polishing their teeth with twigs of green arak-wood.
So generous are the Meccans, ibn Battuta tells us, that even if they only have one loaf, they would happily give away a third or a half, ‘conceding it cheerfully and without grudgingness’. He is impressed to observe the behaviour of the orphan children who find employment in the bazaar. When the townsfolk of Mecca come to the bazaar to buy grain, meat and vegetables, they pass their purchases to one of the boys, who puts the grain in one of his baskets and meat and vegetables in the other, and takes them to the man’s house, so that his meal may be prepared from them. Meanwhile the man goes about his devotions and his business. There is no instance related of any of the boys having ever abused their trust in this matter – on the contrary he delivers what he has been given to carry, with the most scrupulous honesty. ‘They receive for this a fixed fee of a few coppers.’37 Moreover, unlike ibn al-Mujawir, who found the buttocks of the Meccan women rather forbidding, ibn Battuta thinks that ‘the Meccan women are of rare and surpassing beauty, pious and chaste’. They do, however, make much use of perfume, to such a degree that a woman will spend the night hungry and buy perfume with the price of her food. On the eve of Friday, the day of the congregational prayer, groups of women gather to perform the circuit of the Kaaba. They ‘come in their finest apparel, and the Sanctuary is saturated with the smell of their perfume’.38 Indeed, ibn Battuta finds nothing to complain about except the heat, which is so intense that the stones in the Sanctuary burn his feet.
The peace between Utayfa and Rumaitha did not last. The brothers started quarrelling again. They were ordered by Sultan al-Nasir to appear before his court in Cairo. While in Cairo, Utayfa was detained and died in prison in 1343. Rumaitha was allowed to return to Mecca and rule, assisted by his son Ahmad. Indeed, Sultan al-Nasir was so fed up with the political turmoil in Mecca that he considered exterminating all sharifs once and for all. But the religious scholars advised him against such drastic action. They might be a corrupt and murderous lot, but they were still descendants of the Prophet. Exercising the ultimate sanction against the sharifs might lead to disturbances amongst the sultan’s subjects. Al-Nasir was persuaded. Rumaitha too realized that the sharifs were verging on the brink of extinction. He decided to modify his ambitions and behaviour.
Indeed, Rumaitha was sensible enough to hand over authority to his son Ajlan in 1344, two years before his death. Ajlan, who was often referred to as ‘the Swift’, became ruler of Mecca at the age of thirty-seven and lived to seventy, ruling with the obligatory disputes and intervals for twenty-five years. During this time there was peace and stability in the city and he was able to devote considerable time to its development. He built several water cisterns, almshouses and schools in the city, and a number of forts around it. To appease all the reigning monarchs in the Middle East, he allowed the name of the Mongol sultan to be mentioned in the Friday khutba. He is most noted for his harsh treatment of the Zaidis, the Shia sect that gave allegiance to Zaid ibn Ali, grandson of Hussain ibn Ali. The Zaidis, who are theologically much closer to Sunni Muslims than other Shia, were the dominant group in Yemen. They had a small but active presence in Mecca, and participated in many of the outbreaks of political unrest and rebellions the city had witnessed. Their ultimate allegiance belonged to their own imams and spiritual leaders.
Many of the sharifs themselves were originally Zaidis – it was the creed of their forefathers. But by now the dominant orthodoxy in Mecca – and much of the then Muslim world – was the Shafi school of thought. Ajlan had many notable Zaidis in the city tied to posts and whipped in the public square. One Zaidi muezzin was flogged so ruthlessly that he died. But rather than give up their faith, most Zaidis endured the persecution; some managed to flee to Yemen.
Ajlan’s son, Ahmad, continued the policy of his father. The city had now become quite developed and, thanks to the riches bestowed on her by visiting monarchs, rather wealthy. Political stability brought its own rewards. Ahmad became so powerful that even the sultan in Cairo felt threatened. The ‘Meteor of Religion’, as Ahmad ibn Ajlan came to be known, was invited to visit Cairo several times, but he always managed to find an excuse for staying in Mecca. Towards the end of his reign, which lasted from 1360 to 1386, Ahmad became convinced that the Egyptians, or his relatives, would assassinate him. He started wearing chain mail, which made it quite impossible for him to perform either the lesser or the proper pilgrimage. Even performing the circuit around the Kaaba was problematic. Ahmad’s fear was justified. The chain mail, however, was redundant. He was poisoned in 1386. A few days later his young son, Muhammad, was stabbed at Muna during the Hajj. Inevitably, political turmoil followed. During the next twelve months, Mecca had no fewer than five rulers – three ruling concurrently.
Two of Ajlan’s sons (mercifully he only had five) managed to rule quite successfully. Ali ibn Ajlan ruled for seven years – from 1387 to 1394. When Ali was killed, his brother Hassan took over and managed to survive in conjunction with various co-rulers till 1425. During his long rule, Hassan established a regular army of mercenaries, which was passed from one ruler to another, to defend Mecca. He was also able to persuade the Egyptian sultan to award him the title of ‘deputy of the sultan’ for the whole of the Hijaz. But unlike his father, Ajlan, who was an independent ruler, Hassan could not escape the influence of the Mamluk sultans in Egypt. He functioned more as their vassal than as an independent sharif.
The arrangement proved beneficial for the city itself. Mecca was in urgent need of political stability. In 1399, the western side of the Sacred Mosque was burnt down. The fire started in a school that was connected to the Mosque through one of its doors. It spread quickly; over a hundred columns turned into ash and part of the ceiling collapsed. Then the fire spread to the northern side, damaging two sections of the porticoes. It could have easily engulfed the whole Sanctuary, but a flash flood stopped the fire from spreading. The citizens were gravely concerned; they wanted their ruler to give all his attention to rebuilding the Sacred Mosque. By now the Sanctuary had expanded so much and had grown so complex that it was a task beyond the means and capability of the Meccans. As ‘deputy of the sultan’, Hassan was able to get the full support of the Mamluk Sultan al-Nasir Farah bin Barqaq, who sent an accomplished architect, al-Amir Bist al-Zahiri, to oversee the rebuilding of the Sacred Mosque. Most of the city was involved in the reconstruction. Stone was cut from the mountains around Mecca. Columns were built and used to replace the 130 damaged marble columns. The building of the roof was delayed until the right wood could be brought from abroad. When it was finally completed, chains of lamps, carved with ornamental designs, were suspended from the ceiling.
During this period, three of Hassan’s sons disputed the succession. To avoid any future bloodshed, the Egyptian sultan, al-Zahir Sayf-ad-Din Jaqmaq, chose Barakat and made him co-regent during Hassan’s life. There was a good reason for his choice. Mecca had many schools and educational institutions; there were always scholars in the city looking for students. The education available in Mecca, however, was different from the curriculums that had become the norm elsewhere. Scholarship in the city was devoted almost exclusively to theology and law. To be properly educated in philosophy and rhetoric, astronomy and mathematics, medicine and geography, music and literature, one must go to Cairo, Damascus or Baghdad. It was a custom of well-off Meccans to send their sons abroad to acquire a more rounded education. Barakat ibn Hassan was educated in Egypt, where he became renowned for his literary knowledge. He became a sought-after teacher, with students from all over the world coming to study under him. While he was in Cairo, Sultan Jaqmaq personally invited the most distinguished scholars and literary men in Egypt to meet him. Barakat was thus close to the sultan. When his father died in 1425, Barakat faced little difficulty in succeeding him and was able, with slight interruptions, to rule Mecca until his own death in 1455.
Barakat was known not only for his literary prowess but also for his intellectual ability, genuine piety and good works. Indeed, he was probably the only sharif that Mecca had seen so far whose honesty and integrity the citizens could swear by and who did not kill anyone to gain power or flog anyone for holding beliefs different from his own. He dressed modestly – only his turban distinguished him from the other citizens of Mecca. Despite being a ruler, he was addressed in simple and direct fashion by the inhabitants of the city. He spent a great deal of time repairing public buildings and constructing new ones – a mosque and several guest houses – which were so well built that they were still in wide use towards the end of the eighteenth century.
But Barakat I ruled only as a representative of the Egyptian sultan. By now neither the ruler nor the citizens were too concerned about the ever stronger political influence from Egypt. Mecca longed for peace, and the Egyptian influence not only brought peace to Mecca but also enhanced the spiritual prestige of the sharifs. Every year, the sultan would send a kiswa and a khila. The kiswa, the black cover for the Kaaba, arrived with great fanfare and ceremony during the Hajj season, when the old one was removed and replaced with the new one. The khila, a robe of honour, arrived at the same time. It signified the sharif’s designated authority and legitimate rule. While there was clearly a great deal of trust and rapport between the sultan and the sharif, the sultan did not want to take any chances. He placed a permanent garrison of fifty cavalrymen in the Holy City. They had in fact arrived as engineers to undertake the rebuilding work in the Sanctuary, but stayed on as soldiers. Their commander, known as the ‘Inspector of the Holy Places’, ostensibly took his orders from the sharif, but he reported directly to the sultan on the political and economic situation in Mecca. To handle financial matters, as well as to oversee the collection of taxes, the sharif appointed a vizier – usually an educated foreigner. The revenues of Mecca thus became stabilized. Many of the customs introduced by Barakat I for collection and dissemination of zakat (the obligatory religious poor tax), Hajj tax and other financial matters endured for several centuries.
Sharif Barakat I clarified the matter of his successor before he died. The agreement of the sultan had been obtained. His representatives in the Hijaz and Mecca approved of the choice. So the transfer of power from Barakat to his son Muhammad was smooth and peaceful. Muhammad ruled for four decades, continuing the good works of his father. He added new buildings in and around Mecca. In particular, he built a mosque of great beauty in Maymuna, near Mecca. It was the site where the Prophet married his twelfth wife, Barra bint al-Harith. The Prophet gave her the nickname ‘Maymuna’, meaning blessed, as his marriage to her marked the first occasion when he re-entered Mecca after his migration to Medina.
Muhammad son of Barakat had been the ruler in Mecca for three years when news came of the fall of Constantinople, the ancient capital of the Byzantine Empire. While Europe quailed, Mecca was overwhelmed with joy. The entire population rushed towards the Sacred Mosque to offer prayers of thanks. The more perceptive and educated citizens perceived that a major shift of power within the Muslim world was in the offing. The Ottoman Sultan Mehmet II, known as al-Fatih (‘the Conqueror’), had achieved, in May 1453, what the Abbasid caliphs and Mamluk sultans could not. Indeed, his victory over Byzantium was the culmination of a project that had eluded Muslim forces ever since the first direct assault on the city made by Yazid, the son of Muawiya, the first Umayyad caliph, in the year 670.
What Ottoman ascendancy would mean for Mecca time would tell. In the meantime the city remained under the influence of the Egyptian sultans. When he came to the throne in 1468, the Mamluk Sultan al-Asharaf Sayf-ad-Din Qu’it Bay became the main benefactor of Mecca. From Circassia, Qu’it Bay had grown up as a slave. His extraordinary intelligence was noticed by Sultan al-Zahir Sayf-ad-Din Jaqmaq, who adopted him as a protégé. He rose rapidly through the ranks, finally acquiring the throne himself. Over the next decade, he had almost every monument in the Holy City cleaned and repaired. The Muzdalifah mosque was limewashed, the wells at Arafat cleaned, and the interior of the Kaaba roofed. Long-forgotten water channels were reopened. The quarters for the Egyptian pilgrims were renovated and extended. Old almshouses were repaired and new ones built. And four new schools, one for each of the traditional schools of thought, Shafi, Hanafi, Hanbali and Malikki, were built. In 1479, Sultan Qu’it Bay himself came to perform the Hajj, accompanied by his entire court. In fulfilment of a dream, he washed the interior of the Kaaba, watched by the nobles and religious scholars of Mecca. The relationship between the sultan and the sharif was so close that Muhammad named one of his sons after Qu’it Bay.
Sharif Muhammad son of Barakat died in 1495, leaving his own sixteen sons. The best-known was Barakat ibn Muhammad, who like his grandfather had become renowned for his learning and piety. He too was educated in Egypt, and had been a student, unusually, of a number of prominent female jurists. He had impressed Sultan Qu’it Bay, who approved his appointment. But his brothers Hamza and Jazan had other ideas. A period of war and obligatory caravan looting followed. Barakat II made several attempts to capture Mecca, involving a number of battles with his brothers. On one occasion, he was even arrested by the commander of the Egyptian troops and was taken in chains to Cairo. But he finally succeeded in gaining control of Mecca. Indeed, he became the ruler of the whole of Hijaz. His brother Qu’it Bay and his young son Ali became co-governors of Mecca.
The political landscape of the Middle East, however, was ready for another major transformation. In 1517, the Ottoman Sultan Selim annexed Egypt, putting an end to the Mamluk dynasty. The Hijaz, including Mecca and Medina, became part of the Ottoman Empire. The ageing Barakat II immediately sent his thirteen-year-old son, Muhammad Abu Nomay, to the court of Selim. The purpose was not just to pay homage to the new ruler, but also to secure some independence for Mecca. The Ottoman sultan was pleased to receive the young envoy from Mecca. Abu Nomay may have been a teenager, but he was very articulate. He regaled Sultan Selim with stories of the Holy City and gave him a detailed account of the political situation in the Hijaz. The sultan acknowledged the right of the sharifs to rule Mecca, confirmed the independence of the Holy City, and even agreed that the sovereignty of the sharifs should extend beyond Mecca to Medina, Jeddah and the whole of the Hijaz. There was only one condition. The supremacy of the ‘Sublime Porte’ – the symbolic term for the Ottoman Empire – had to be recognized.
Young Abu Nomay returned to Mecca with a firman – an edict from Sultan Selim. It was read out in the public squares of the city as well as in the Sanctuary, and put on the cloaks of honour that the sultan had sent to the sharifs. The Friday khutba now contained only one name: that of the Ottoman sultan.