One thousand roads to Mecca : ten centuries of travelers writing about the Muslim pilgrimage

756 Pages·2015·5.95 MB·English

by  Wolfe

One
Thousand
Roads to Mecca
Books by Michael Wolfe
TRAVEL
In Morocco
The Hadj: An American’s Pilgrimage to Mecca
VERSE
How Love Gets Around
World Your Own
No, You Wore Red
Paradise: Reading Notes
Greek to Me
TRANSLATION
Cut These Words into My Stone: Ancient Greek Epitaphs
CULTURE
Taking Back Islam (Essays)
FICTION
Invisible Weapons
One
Thousand
Roads to Mecca
Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about
the Muslim Pilgrimage
Edited and Introduced by
Michael Wolfe
R A
Foreword by eza slan
UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION
Grove Press
New York
Copyright © 1997, 2015 by Michael Wolfe
Foreword © 2015 by Reza Aslan
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any
electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems,
without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote
brief passages in a review. Scanning, uploading, and electronic distribution of this book or
the facilitation of such without the permission of the publisher is prohibited. Please
purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage
electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is
appreciated. Any member of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the
work for classroom use, or anthology, should send inquiries to Grove Atlantic, 154 West
14th Street, New York, NY 10011 or [email protected].
Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Wolfe, Michael, 1945–
One thousand roads to Mecca : ten centuries of travelers writing
about the Muslim pilgrimage / Michael Wolfe.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-8021-3599-5
eISBN 978-0-8021-9220-2
1. Muslim pilgrims and pilgrimages—Saudi Arabia—Mecca.
I. Title.
BP187.3.W66 1997
297.3'52—dc21 97-1329
Design by Laura Hammond Hough
Grove Press
an imprint of Grove Atlantic
154 West 14th Street,
New York, NY 10011
Distributed by Publishers Group West
groveatlantic.com
Contents
Foreword by Reza Aslan
Preface
Introduction
One: The Medieval Period:
Three Classic Muslim Travelers, 1050–1326
1 Naser-e Khosraw, Persia, 1050
2 Ibn Jubayr, Spain, 1183–84
3 Ibn Battuta, Morocco, 1326
Two: Enter the Europeans:
Renegades, Impostors, Slaves, and Scholars, 1503–1814
4 Ludovico di Varthema, Bologna, 1503
5 A Pilgrim with No Name, Italy, ca. 1575
6 Joseph Pitts, England, ca. 1685
7 Ali Bey al-Abbasi, Spain, 1807
8 John Lewis Burckhardt, Switzerland, 1814
Three: Nineteenth-Century Changes, 1853–1908
9 Sir Richard Burton, Great Britain, 1853
10 Her Highness Sikandar, the Begum of Bhopal, India, 1864
11 John F. Keane, Anglo-India, 1877–78
12 Mohammad Hosayn Farahani, Persia, 1885–86
13 Arthur J. B. Wavell, Anglo-Africa, 1908
Four: The Early Twentieth Century, 1925–1933
14 Eldon Rutter, Great Britain, 1925
15 Winifred Stegar, Australia, 1927
16 Muhammad Asad, Galicia, 1927
17 Harry St. John Philby, Great Britain, 1931
18 Lady Evelyn Cobbold, Great Britain, 1933
Five: The Jet Age Hajj, 1947–2000
19 Hamza Bogary, Mecca, ca. 1947
20 Jalal Al-e Ahmad, Iran, 1964
21 Malcolm X, United States 1964
22 Saida Miller Khalifa, Great Britain, 1970
23 Michael Wolfe, United States, 1990
24 Abdellah Hammoudi, United States/Morocco, 1999
25 Qanta Ahmed, United States, 2001
Maps
Acknowledgments
Permissions
Glossary: Names and Terms
Selected Bibliography
Index
Foreword
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 , if not further, pagan Arabs
CE
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.
Preface
In the years when I performed the Hajj, then wrote a book about it, between
1990 and 1993, I became aware of a string of accounts by Muslims and non-
Muslims who over the last one thousand years had gone to Mecca on the
pilgrimage. A little later, I began to read these works in order. I had no
trouble locating the first three authors excerpted in this collection. Naser-e
Khosraw (in Mecca in 1050), Ibn Jubayr (1185), and Ibn Battuta (1326) are
all classics. Other books, deservedly well-known, by Western authors like Sir
Richard Burton (1853) and Malcolm X (1964), are readily available in
bookstores. Bibliographical searches and the polling of scholars uncovered
many more works I did not know. Some were rare volumes, ordered and
shipped from libraries across the country. Tracking them down, even
handling them—at times in first editions that threatened to crumble in one’s
hands—was an adventure. But that was not the end of my reading. The job of
placing each book in its context led to other books, of history, of Muslim
theology, of Western literary criticism.
I began this work for the pleasure of it. I continued in the growing belief
that it brings together a literature worth collecting. Certainly practicing
Muslims will find plenty here to interest them. Others may find these stories
entertaining as adventures. As cultural artifacts, they may have importance,
too, especially for Westerners in this period of deep misunderstandings about
Islam. Islam is a majority faith in fifty-four countries around the globe, most
of them in the Middle East, the East, and Africa. In addition, millions of
Muslims now live in Western countries, Western cities, Western
neighborhoods. It is no secret that in these latter settings, Muslim–non-
Muslim relationships suffer from misconceptions on all sides. If Westerners
have more pressing reasons now to learn about Islam, perhaps the Hajj can
provide a way to that knowledge. After all, the annual pilgrimage to Mecca is
a supreme expression of the Muslim religion. All the principal practices of
the faith are contained and made more apparent in its rites. Furthermore, the
records of this journey that pilgrims have been making now for thirteen
centuries reveal Islamic civilization as a vital global society with many