The Adventures of Ibn Battuta: A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century
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On the evening of the same day that the caravan made camp outside the walls of the city, Ibn Battuta and his companions went to the mosque, “rejoicing at this most signal favor, . . . praising God Most High for our safe arrival at the sacred abodes of His Apostle.” The sanctuary was in the form of an open court, surrounded on all sides by colonnades. At the southeast corner amidst rows of marble pillars stood the pentagonal tomb of Muhammad, and here Ibn Battuta repaired to pray and give thanks. During the following four days, he tells us in the Rihla,
we spent each night in the holy mosque, where everyone [engaged in pious exercises]; some, having formed circles in the court and lit a quantity of candles, and with book-rests in their midst [on which were placed volumes] of the Holy Qur’an were reciting from it; some were intoning hymns of praise to God; others were occupied in contemplation of the Immaculate Tomb (God increase it in sweetness); while on every side were singers chanting in eulogy of the Apostle of God.
During the days, he undoubtedly found time to visit other mosques and venerated sites in and around the city, including the cemetery (al-Baqi’) east of the walls that contained the graves of numerous kinsmen and Companions of the Prophet. He is also likely to have made a point of seeing the little domed tomb of Malik ibn ’Anas, the great eighth-century jurist and founder of the Maliki school of law.
In the modern age charter buses whisk pilgrims along the paved highway connecting Medina with Mecca, but Ibn Battuta and his fellows faced 200 more miles of fiery desolation before reaching the goal of their hopes. Yet this final stage of the journey was different: haggard wayfarers became celebrants, uplifted and renewed, and the whole dusty company was transformed into a joyous, white-robed procession. The change took place at Dhu l-Hulaifa, a tiny settlement just five miles along the southbound road out of Medina. This was one of the five stations (mikats) on the five principal trails leading to Mecca where pilgrims were required to enter into the state of consecration, called ihram. Here male pilgrims took off their traveling clothes, washed themselves, prayed, and finally donned the special garment, also called ihram, which they would continue to wear until after they entered the Holy City and, if it were the time of the Greater Pilgrimage, performed the rites of hajj. The garment consisted of two large, plain, unstitched sheets of white cloth, one of which was wrapped around the waist, reaching to the ankles, the other gathered around the upper part of the body and draped over the left shoulder. Nothing was worn over or beneath the ihram, and feet were left bare or shod only in sandals without heels. Women did not put on these garments, but dressed modestly and plainly, covering their heads but leaving their faces unveiled. Once the pilgrim assumed the ihram, symbolizing the equality of all men before God, he was required to behave in a manner consistent with the state of sanctity into which he had voluntarily entered. The Prophet warned: “The Pilgrimage is in months well-known; whoso undertakes the duty of Pilgrimage in them shall not go in to his womenfolk nor indulge in ungodliness and disputing in the Pilgrimage. Whatsoever good you do, God knows it.”5
After fulfilling the ceremonies of ihram, the caravan set forth once again, the pilgrims walking straighter now and shouting God’s praises into the great Arabian void. The route followed a southwesterly course across low ridges of the Hijaz hills and then down to the plain bordering the Red Sea. The company reached the coast at Rabigh, a station about 95 miles north of Jidda, where the routes from Syria and Egypt finally converged and where the Egyptian pilgrims took the ihram. From here the caravan turned into the desert again, marching now southwestward along the coastal plain. Probably seven days after leaving Rabigh6 they arrived in the morning hours at the gates of Mecca, the Mother of Cities.
It was mid October 1326. Twenty-two years old and a year and four months the pilgrim-adventurer, Ibn Battuta rode triumphantly into Mecca’s narrow, brown valley and proceeded at once to the “illustrious Holy House,” reciting with his companions the prayer of submission to the Divine will.
What is Thy Command? I am here, O God!
What is Thy Command? I am here!
What is Thy Command? I am here!
Thou art without companion!
What is Thy Command? I am here!7
Among the cosmopolitan cities of Ibn Battuta’s time, Mecca was in one sense pre-eminent. From the end of Ramadan and throughout the months of Shawwal and Dhu l-Qa’da, pilgrims from every Islamic land gathered in the city to pray in the Sacred Mosque, and, on the ninth day of the month Dhu l-Hijja, to stand in fellowship on the plain of ’Arafat before the Mount of Mercy. As Islam expanded into more distant parts of Asia and Africa during the Middle Period, the call to the hajj embraced an ever-larger and more diverse range of peoples. In the rites of the perambulations around the Ka’ba, the great stone cube that stood in the center of the mosque, Turks of Azerbaijan walked with Malinke of the Western Sudan, Berbers of the Atlas with Indians of Gujerat. The grand mosque, called the Haram, or Sanctuary, was the one place in the world where the adherents of the four main legal schools, plus Shi’is, Zaydis, ’Ibadis, and other sectarians, prayed together in one place according to their slightly varying ritual forms. Though there was a fixed order of prayer in the mosque for the four schools, reports Ibn Battuta,
at the sunset prayer they pray all at the same time, each imam leading his own congregation. In consequence of this the people are invaded by some wandering of attention and confusion; the Malikite [worshipper] often bows in time with the bowing of the Shafi’ite, and the Hanafite prostrates himself at the prostration of the Hanbalite, and you see them listening attentively each one to the voice of the muezzin who is chanting to the congregation of his rite, so that he does not fall victim to his inattention.
Black Muslims and white Muslims, Sunnis and Shi’is all came to Mecca with the single declared purpose to fulfill a holy duty and to worship the One God. But they also came, incidentally, to trade. Pilgrims almost always brought goods with them to sell, sometimes whole caravan loads. The bedouin and oasis-dwellers of the Hijaz and the Yemen hauled in huge quantities of foodstuffs to feed the multitude. Ibn Jubayr wrote of his visit in 1183:
Although there is no commerce save in the pilgrim period, nevertheless, since people gather in it from east and west, there will be sold in one day . . . precious objects such as pearls, sapphires, and other stones, various kinds of perfume such as musk, camphor, amber and aloes, Indian drugs and other articles brought from India and Ethiopia, the products of the industries of Iraq and the Yemen, as well as the merchandise of Khurasan, the goods of the Maghrib, and other wares such as it is impossible to enumerate or correctly assess.8
Though Mecca’s own hinterland was a stony desert, Ibn Jubayr found the market street “overflowing” with “figs, grapes, pomegranates, quinces, peaches, lemons, walnuts, palm-fruit, water-melons, cucumbers and all the vegetables.”9
If Mecca at the season of the hajj was a microcosm of all the peoples and all the wares of a good part of Africa and Eurasia, its cosmopolitanism was in other respects shallow. It was a cosmopolitanism derived from a unique annual event and not from the existence of mighty, urbane educational or philanthropic institutions as was the case with Cairo or Damascus. When the pilgrims rolled up their prayer mats and headed back to their homelands in the latter part of Dhu l-Hijja, the city reverted to the more prosaic activities of a dusty western Arabian town. Though foreign traders, scholars, and stranded poor folk were to be seen in the city all through the year, the population dwindled quickly when the feast days were over. Mecca had no substantial agricultural base of its own and was almost completely dependent on neighboring oases and countries for its sustenance. In those conditions Mecca could never have grown into a metropolis or supported majestic colleges, khans, and palaces of the sort that distinguished the mature urban centers of Islam. Though the city had its colleges, most of them were modest, and teaching was largely conducted in the Haram.10
If privation and remoteness finally doomed Mecca to second-rate city-hood, those very co
nditions suited it perfectly as a place for spiritual retreat and ascetic exercise. Simply to live there for a short time was an act of self-denial — at least it was before the age of automobiles, public toilets, and air conditioners. The city lies, not like Medina, in the midst of an oasis, but at the bottom of an arid depression surrounded by a double range of treeless mountains. From the north, the south, and the southwest, three ravines lead the visitor down into “this breathless pit enclosed by walls of rock,”11 where summer temperatures soar to 126 degrees Fahrenheit. Before modern technology revolutionized the logistical aspects of the hajj, water and housing ran chronically short, epidemics broke out among the pilgrims, and flash floods raged suddenly down the central streets of the town, on several occasions flooding the Haram and severely damaging the Ka’ba. Yet like all deserts, the Meccan wilderness possessed a pure and terrifying beauty, an immensity of light and shadow that hinted at the workings of the Infinite. And though the land was unyieldingly grim, it inflicted its dangers and discomforts on all equally, reducing to triviality differences of race and class and driving the pilgrims together in the knowledge that only God is great.
Whatever a pilgrim may have suffered on the road to Mecca, his personal cares were quickly enough forgotten as he entered the court of the Haram and stood before the great granite block enveloped in its black veil. “The contemplation of . . . the venerable House,” wrote Ibn Jubayr, “is an awful sight which distracts the senses in amazement, and ravishes the heart and mind.”12 Even the infidel Englishman Richard Burton, who visited the mosque in disguise in 1853, declared that “the view was strange, unique” and “that of all the worshippers who clung weeping to the curtain, or who pressed their beating hearts to the stone, none felt for the moment a deeper emotion than did [I].”13
The Haram and the Ka’ba, Mecca
Library of Congress
Generations of rulers have made numerous alterations to the Haram and the Ka’ba, so that the structures look substantially different today from the way they did when Ibn Battuta saw them. In its modern form the Ka’ba is in the shape of a slightly irregular cube, set almost in the center of the court and rising to a height of 50 feet. The walls of blue-grey Meccan stone are draped year round with the kiswa, made of black brocade and embellished with an encircling band of Koranic inscription in gold. A single door, set about seven feet above the ground and concealed by its own richly decorated covering, gives entry to the windowless interior of the sanctuary. There are no relics inside, simply three wooden pillars supporting the roof, ornamental drapes along the walls, lamps of silver and gold hanging from the ceiling, and a copy of the Koran. At the eastern corner of the exterior of the Ka’ba is embedded the revered Black Stone, which measures about twelve inches across and is set in a rim of silver. The surface of the stone is worn smooth and no one can be certain of its composition. In Koranic tradition Abraham built the Ka’ba, a wooden structure as it originally stood, to commemorate the One God. Though in pre-Islamic times the sanctuary was a home of idols and its precinct a place of pagan rites, Muhammad restored it to its original purpose as a temple consecrated to the primordial monotheism of Abraham.
When a visitor arrives in Mecca, whether or not he intends to undertake the hajj, he must as his very first act perform the tawaf, the circumambulation. He walks around the Ka’ba seven times counterclockwise, stepping quickly the first three times, then walking more slowly, all the while reciting prayers special to the occasion. Each time he passes the eastern corner he strives to kiss or touch the Black Stone, not because some wondrous power is invested in it but because the Prophet kissed it. During the less congested months of the year, the pious visitor may perform the tawaf and kiss the stone at his leisure several times a day. But in the hajj season the mosque becomes a revolving mass of humanity, giving the illusion that the very floor of the courtyard is turning round the Ka’ba.
Facing the northeast façade of the shrine is a small structure (today in the shape of a little cage surmounted with a golden dome) called the Maqam Ibrahim. Inside lies the stone said to bear the footprints of the Patriarch, who used the rock as a platform when he constructed the upper portions of the House. When the pilgrim has completed his tawaf, he goes to the Maqam where he prays a prayer of two prostrations. Near the Maqam is the blessed well of Zamzam. Here the Angel Gabriel (according to one tradition) miraculously brought forth a spring to quench the thirst of Hagar and her little son Isma’il after her husband Abraham had gone off into the desert. From the Maqam the pilgrim moves to the well to drink, which in Ibn Battuta’s time was enclosed in a building of beautiful marble. The sacred water is sold in the cloisters of the mosque and in the streets of the city. During their sojourn the pilgrims perform their ritual ablutions with it and some, despite the heavily saline taste, drink profuse amounts for its reputed healing qualities.
When the pilgrim has drunk from the well, he may leave the mosque by the southeastern gate and proceed several yards to a little elevation, called al-Safa, which lies at one end of a Meccan street. From the steps of al-Safa he walks or jogs about a quarter of a mile along the street to another small eminence called al-Marwa. He repeats this promenade seven times, reciting prayers along the way, to commemorate Hagar’s frantic search for water along the ground lying between the two hills. This rite is called the sa’y, that is, the Running. With the performing of it the pilgrim has completed the preliminary rites of the hajj and may at last find his lodgings and begin to introduce himself to the city.
The Syrian caravan of the year 1326 (726 A.H.) arrived at the western gate of Mecca sometime before dawn. Though probably exhausted from a night’s march, Ibn Battuta and his companions made their way at once to the center of the city and entered the Haram by the gate called al-Salam. Praising God who “hath rejoiced our eyes by the vision of the illustrious Ka’ba,” they performed the tawaf of arrival:
We kissed the holy Stone; we performed a prayer of two bowings at the Maqam Ibrahim and clung to the curtains of the Ka’ba at the Multazam between the door and the black Stone, where prayer is answered; we drank of 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.
The “house” Ibn Battuta repaired to was in fact a Sufi hospice (he uses the term ribat) called al-Muwaffaq, located near the southwestern side of the mosque. In his usual fashion he quickly struck up acquaintances with the pious residents of the lodge, some of them Maghribis. We may suppose that he put to good advantage the three weeks he had to himself before the start of the hajj festival, exploring the secondary shrines and historic sites of the Prophet’s birthplace, rummaging through the wares in the market street, and perhaps climbing to the top of one of the holy mountains whose barren slopes roughed out the contours of the town. He also formed an opinion of the local citizenry, judging them generous, kindly, and proper.
The Meccans 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 kuhl, and are constantly picking their teeth with slips of green arak-wood. The Meccan women are of rare and surpassing beauty, pious and chaste.
The use of perfumes, oils, and makeup would of course have been out of fashion for everyone during the days preceding the hajj, when personal frippery was forbidden. Ibn Battuta himself, keeping to his ritual declaration of intention to complete the rites of the pilgrimage in a state of consecration, continued to wear his white ihram garb from the time he assumed it on the road from Medina until his hajj was fulfilled a month later. He also, we may presume, obeyed with precision the special taboos that attended the state of ihram. In all certainty he did not get into arguments or fights, kill plants or animals, engage in sexual relations, cut his hair or nails, wear sewn garments, or adorn himself with jewelry.14
We can also be sure that during these three weeks he spent the better part of his days and probably some of his nights in the Haram, where he pe
rformed additional tawafs (always meritorious in the sight of God), drank from the well, and made conversation with new acquaintances. The great mosque was indeed the center of all public life in Mecca. The streets of the town, winding through the canyons and down the slopes of the encircling hills, all converged on the Haram, whose court formed the very bottom of the alluvial depression. The mosque was in the shape of an irregular parallelogram, the roofed-over portion of the structure between the outer walls and the court being suported by a forest of marble columns (471 of them by Ibn Jubayr’s count). Nineteen gates on all four sides gave access to the colonnades and court, and five minarets surmounted the mosque, four of them at the corners.15
The Haram was not only the place of the pilgrim stations but also the center for daily prayers, Qur’anic reading, and education. In the shade of the cloisters, or in the court when the sun was low, sat rings of learners and listeners, while copyists, Qur’an readers, and even tailors occupied benches set up beneath the arches of the colonnades.16 When prayers were not in session or the crush of pilgrims not too great, Meccan children played in the court, and the people of the city streamed back and forth through the gates, routinely using the sacred precinct as a short cut between one part of town and another. For poorer pilgrims the mosque was home. “Here,” wrote John Burckhardt, another nineteenth-century Christian who penetrated the Haram incognito, “many poor Indians, or negroes, spread their mats, and passed the whole period of their residence at Mecca. Here they both eat and sleep; but cooking is not allowed.”17 There was not a single moment day or night throughout the year, so says the tradition, when at least a few of the faithful were not circling the Ka’ba. In the evening the square was lighted with dozens of torches and candles, bathing the worshippers and the great cube in a flickering orange glow.