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he H a i : The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca T and the Holy Places

F. E. Peters

Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. 399 pages, $29.95 (ISBN 0-691-02120-1).

Review by Haidar Moukdad, Ph.D. McGill University

he Hajj, meaning ”visit to the revered place,” or the pilgrimage T to Mecca, is the fifth pillar of Islam and the most significant manifestation of Islamic faith. For those Muslims who are mentally, physically, and financially able to make the faithful journey to Mecca, performing this ritual is the peak of their religious life. The Hajj is a gathering of Muslims in the holy city and a remarkable spiritual happening. In performing it, a pilgrim follows the order of a ritual as Muhammad performed the rites during his last pilgrim- age. The pilgrimage season begins in the tenth month, the month following Ramadan, and lasts through the middle of the twelfth month, Dhu al-Hijja. The actual rites and prayers take place at the sacred Ka’ba in Mecca and at nearby locations. Muslims associate the origin of the Hajj and the founding of the Ka’ba with theprophet Abraham. It is to commemorate the Divine rituals observed by the Prophet Abraham and his son Ishmael, who are the first pilgrims to the house of Allah on earth, the Ka‘ba. It is also to remember the grand assembly of the Day of Judgement when people will stand equal before Allah. Nowadays, nearly two million Muslims perform the Hajj each year.

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The trip to the Holy Places, in itself, has been for centuries a rich source of innumerable accounts filled with exhilarating adven- tures and fascinating observations. Throughout the centuries, pil- grims and travelers to Mecca and the holy sites surrounding it have added to themystical nature of the journey by leaving a wide variety of descriptionsand personal glimpses, ranging from simple observa- tions to more complex geographical and historical studies.

It is with these accounts that the author of the book in hand is concerned. Peters’ anthology is a collection of first-hand accounts shaped into a richly detailed narrative. Its aim is to provide the reader with a history of the central ritual of Islam from its remote pre-Islamic origins to the end of the Hashimite Kingdom of the Hijaz in 1926. The author stops his history at this point explain- ing that subsequently air travel and oil money changed a hitherto unchanged tradition. The book itself is surprisingly full of de- lightful stories, from those told by Muslims to travel adventures written by risk-taking Europeans who were able to enter the sanctuaries by pretending to be followers of Islam.

The author introduces the narratives with an essay dealing mainly with the origins of the Hajj, citing relevant verses from the Qur’an and tracing the evolution of the idea and the shaping of the Holy Places since the times of Abraham and Ishmael in Mecca. He also includes physical descriptions of the buildings and detailed delineations of the sacred sites in Saudi Arabia. Historically, he defines the year 632 A.D. as the date when the real concept of the Hajj evolved to become the ritual we are familiar with today. I t was in March of that year that the Prophet Muhammad went on what was to be his first and last Hajj as a Muslim. His journey to Mecca and the rituals he performed there served as the foundation on which all future performances of the Hajj rituals have been based.

Accounts of the trip begin with the period following the death of Muhammad. The Hajj routes consisted of roads from various parts of the Islamic lands to Medina and Mecca. Chief among them was the great pilgrim road from Kufa in Iraq which cut across the north Arabian steppe. Peters chose the descriptions of Ibn Jubayr and of Ibn Battuta to make the point of illustrating the importance of this route. Another route was the one which started in Egypt. I t was an overland route from Cairo to the Hijaz and was described by many Arab geographers, who enumerated the rest stations along the way. The famous Persian traveler, Nasir-i Khusraw, turned his fourth Hajj into a book, when he went from Cairo via Aydhab and Jidda to Mecca in 1049. The fascinating excerpts from his

account add to the richness of the anthology and provide the reader with an opportunityto examine it against the description which Ibn Jubayr wrote of the same route.

The rest of the book includes narratives and descriptions of other Hajj routes under the successive Muslim authorities,from the Ummayads to the Hashimite family. I t also deals with the difficul- ties and health problems encountered by pilgrims on their way to Mecca and after getting there. Unfortunately, it ends abruptly with the end of the Hashimite Kingdom in the Hijaz and the founding of present-day Saudi Arabia. While Peters’ justification for that is quite acceptable, we cannot help wondering what the result would have been had he decided to go further than that. That said, the anthology is pleasant reading and an important addition to English literature on the Hajj. I t might be a while before someone under- takes the task of compiling an anthology of more recent Hajj accounts, but, until then, the present one is among the best sources on the Hajj for the reader of English.

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