An Unholy Interruption: Hajj Pilgrimage Begins Amidst Crowdless Scenes

One of the Five Pillars of Islam, the hajj is a pilgrimage like no other, inspiring epic journeys of devotion from Muslims around the world. Centred on the seven circumambulations of the Kaaba – the cloaked ‘House of Allah’ – in Mecca, it is a yearly spectacle almost unprecedented in scale.

This year, however, the traditional hajj season has begun in a subdued manner and will continue this way until its conclusion. With the coronavirus pandemic still with us, and Saudi Arabia having registered more than 270,000 cases, restrictions on entering the country are in place. As such, this year’s event will be reserved for Saudi nationals and they will have to abide by strict social distancing rules, as early images have shown.

A typical hajj scene as pilgrims encircle the Kaaba at the centre of the Great Mosque of Mecca

The history of the hajj predates Muhammad and the founding of Islam. The apocryphal story tells of how the prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) left his wife and son alone in the desert of Mecca with barely any food and water on the commandment of God. Whilst his wife (Hajira) ran seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwah in search of water, Ibrahim’s son Ismail (Ishmael) unearthed a subterranean fountain that saved them. Arabic tribes, on hearing of this heaven-sent source, soon travelled to live in the area.

Ibrahim and Ismail built a house (the Kaaba) at the site as a tribute to God and after receiving another revelation, Ibrahim began to spread the word about the requirement for a pilgrimage to this holiest of sites. However, until the arrival of Muhammad the pilgrimage was undertaken by pagan Arabs who filled the Kaaba with ‘unholy idols’. It was only after the Muslim conquest of Mecca in 630 that Muhammad restored the sanctity of the Kaaba and formalised the hajj as it is known today.

Ever since, huge numbers of people – originating with the desert caravans of the Arab world and progressing all the way through to the era of intercontinental jet travel – permitted to undertake the hajj, that is clothed, true Islamic believers, have fulfilled one of their life’s requirements. Indeed, only infirmity or poverty can excuse a Muslim from travelling to Mecca and, as is the case with most religions, many people have surely bankrupted themselves in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment.

A caravan train crosses the Suez Canal in Egypt during a late 19th century hajj

The famed Berber scholar Ibn Battuta (1304-1369/9) undertook the hajj in 1326, relying on charity to join a caravan and complete the 820 mile journey from Damascus to Medina, where the true pilgrimage began. After four days in Medina he proceeded to Mecca where the Kaaba drew him inexorably forward:

Like a bride who is displayed upon the bridal-chair of majesty, and walks with proud steps in the mantles of beauty… We made around it the seven-fold circuit of arrival and kissed the holy Stone; we performed a prayer of two bowings at the Maqam Ibrahim [a shrine which houses the footprints of Abraham] and clung to the curtains of the Ka’ba … where prayer is answered; we drank the water of Zamzam…; then having run between al-Safa and al-Marwa, we took up our lodging there in a house near the Gate of Ibrahim.

His was an experience almost unchanged for more than a millennia, one experienced by a wide variety of people across the Muslim world.

An 18th century European rendering of the Kaaba

One of the most infamous undertakers of this epic journey, however, was an infidel. In 1853, the intrepid Victorian-era explorer Richard Burton (he of Nile fame) disguised himself as a Muslim pilgrim, joined a caravan and headed off for Mecca via Medina. A brief snippet of his account serves to concoct an image of overwhelming emotion amongst the pious:

On Saturday, the 10th of September, at one in the morning, there was great excitement in the Caravan, and loud cries of ‘Mecca! Mecca! Oh, the Sanctuary, the Sanctuary!’ All burst into loud praises and many wept. We reached it next morning, after ten days and nights from EI Medinah.

First I did the circumambulation of the Haram. Early next morning I was admitted to the house of our Lord; and we went to the holy well Zemzem, the holy water of Mecca, and then the Ka’abah, in which is inserted the famous black stone, where they say a prayer for the Unity of Allah.

Then I performed the seven circuits round the Ka’abah, called the Tawaf. I then managed to have a way pushed for me through the immense crowd to kiss it.

Burton in apparently convincing Muslim garb

More than 2 million Muslims now flock to Mecca each year and their arrival underpins a significant chunk of the Saudi economy. With attendance figures for this year’s hajj likely to be around the 10,000 mark, businesses will go bust, making many reliant on the state for their survival.

There is a certain irony that international travellers have been able to undertake the hajj almost uninterrupted for more than a thousand years, in a region plagued by warfare and instability. Now they are denied by a virus.

No doubt the Saudi government has made the correct decision but if a vaccine is successfully trialled and widely-available by this time next year, expect a record showing at the holiest of Islam’s historic cities. No doubt the debates on the global health implications of such an event are a headache Riyadh will reserve for another day.

Hajj in the era of Covid-19

Sources

“The Hajj: from Medina to Mecca: 1326”, Berkeley University of California, http://www.orias.berkeley.edu (2020)

“Entering the Forbidden City of Mecca, 1853”, EyeWitness to History, http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com (2006)

The Woe of Damascus: from Islamic Masterpiece to Hellish Warzone

Damascus has become synonymous with suffering, misery and evil. The greatest bastion of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime, this great capital has been subjected to waves of offensives and counter-offensives since the Syrian Civil War began in March 2011. One of the greatest tragedies of the war is the widespread destruction of many parts of the once opulent city. The contrast between contemporary Damascus and its glorious past are illuminated by a recent New York Times article and an account by the great 14th century Moroccan explorer Ibn Battuta.

Here is how Anne Barnard and a New York Times colleague in Syria described Damascus on 10th February 2013:

Soldiers have swept through city neighborhoods, making arrests ahead of a threatened rebel advance downtown, even as opposition fighters edge past the city limits, carrying mortars and shelling security buildings. Fighter jets that pounded the suburbs for months have begun to strike Jobar, an outlying neighborhood of Damascus proper, creating the disturbing spectacle of a government’s bombing its own capital.

Swathes of Damascus lie in ruins. Its historic centre becomes increasingly threatened

For months, this ancient city has been hunched in a defensive crouch as fighting raged in suburbs that curve around the city’s south and east. On the western edge of the city, the palace of the embattled president, Bashar al-Assad, sits on a steep, well-defended ridge.

In between, Damascus, with its walled Old City, grand diagonal avenues and crowded working-class districts, has remained the eye of the storm. People keep going to work, even as electric service grows sporadic and groceries dwindle, even as the road to the airport is often cut off by fighting outside the city, and even as smoke from artillery and airstrikes in suburbs becomes a regular feature on the horizon.

Near the Qadam railway station last week, many of the government soldiers, their hair and beards untrimmed, wore disheveled or dirty uniforms and smelled as if they had not had showers in a long time. Some soldiers and security officers even appeared drunk, walking unsteadily with their weapons askew — a shocking sight in Syria, where regimented security forces and smartly uniformed officers have long been presented as a symbol of national pride.

Soldiers on both sides engage in undisciplined drunkeness

Unkempt government soldiers, some appearing drunk, have been deployed near a rebel-held railway station in the southern reaches of this tense capital. Office workers on 29th of May Street, in the heart of the city, tell of huddling at their desks, trapped inside for hours by gun battles that sound alarmingly close.

Shells and airstrikes kept raining on the neighborhood, sending dust and smoke into the air, higher than the minarets on its mosques.

What is particularly notable about this vivid description is how the increasingly disheveled appearance of Damascus is matched by the appearance of its citizenry. The capital, once a symbol of pride, has become something stained and pitiful. People cower in fear amid their ruined citadel. Spirals of smoke climb higher than the gorgeous minarets that once ruled the skyline unchallenged, serving as a poignant metaphor for Damascus’ decline.

Ibn Battuta had a different experience when he visited Damascus as a young man in 1326. An important trading hub at the crossroads of Europe and the Middle East, Damascus had a population of over 100,000 by the beginning of the 14th century. Even though it had become a vassal state of the Egyptian-based Mamluk Empire, it retained a degree of independence and was a renowned centre of Islamic scholarship.

Ibn Battuta was the medieval world’s most extensive traveller

Ibn Battuta wrote:

As for Damascus, she is the Paradise of the Orient, and dawning-place of her resplendent light, the seal of the Islamic lands which we have explored, and the bride of the cities which we have unveiled. She hath adorned herself with flowers of sweet-scented herbs, and displayed herself in brocaded vestures from her gardens; she hath occupied an assured position in the site of beauty, and hath decked herself in her bridal chair with fairest adornment. She is ennobled by the fact that God Most High gave a refuge to the Messiah [Jesus] (upon Him be peace) and His Mother [Mary] in it… Her soil is sated with abundant water … and places cry to thee ‘Stamp thy foot; here is a cool spring for thee to wash thyself and to drink’.

He described the 8th century Umayyad Mosque at the city’s centre as:

the greatest mosque on earth …, the most perfect in architecture, and the most exquisite in beauty…In this mosque also there are a great many students who never leave it, occupying themselves unremittingly in prayer and recitation of the Koran . . . The townsfolk supply their needs of food and clothing, although students never beg for anything of the kind from them.

The Umayyad Mosque retains its splendor but for how long?

As for the citizens of Damascus:

All strangers amongst them are handsomely treated and care is taken that they are not forced to any action that might injure their self-respect. The variety and expenditure of the religious endowments at Damascus are beyond computation. There are endowments in aid of persons who cannot undertake the pilgrimage to Mecca, out of which are paid the expenses of those who go in their stead. There are other endowments for supplying wedding outfits to girls whose families are unable to provide them, and others for the freeing of prisoners. There are endowments for travellers, out of the revenues of which they are given food, clothing, and the expenses of conveyance to their countries.

Damascus’ citizens were described as generous, pious and intelligent

Such descriptions seem almost paradisical, with the wonders of the city matched by the benevolence of the populace. The city’s appearance of grandeur is certainly a far cry from the scenes so evident some 780 years later.

It is fortunate that Damascus’ ancient centre remains relatively intact yet its status as a UNESCO world heritage site will not protect it forever. Whilst the human suffering of the Syrian people has rightly dominated world news, the threat to the country’s historical and cultural treasures is almost equally concerning. Their destruction would break the link between Syria’s present and past, a crucial component of national identity, something the Syrian people will have to strive to regain if they can ever free themselves from their perpetual struggle.

References:

• ‘Damascus on Edge as War Seeps into Syrian Capital’, Anne Barnard
• ‘The Travels of Ibn Battuta’, H A R Gibb (ed.)