Mecca

8 Key excerpts on "Mecca"

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  Islamic Empires

  • Justin Marozzi(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Pegasus Books

    (Publisher)

  1 Mecca – Mother of All Cities (7th Century)

  Many a time have We seen you turn your face towards the sky. We will make you turn towards a qiblah that will please you. * Turn your face towards the Holy Mosque; wherever you be, turn your faces towards it.

  Quran 2:144

  For centuries Mecca has been a mostly intangible aspiration. It haunts the imaginations of the great majority of Muslims unable to complete the arduous, often dangerous and invariably expensive hajj pilgrimage. Those fortunate enough to have made the journey frequently consider the hajj the most spiritually satisfying experience of their lives. They return describing it in hallowed tones, recalling pounding hearts, quickening pulses and flowing tears, using words like ‘mind-blowing’, ‘mesmerizing’ and ‘humbling’. To a man and woman, each pilgrim is overwhelmed by an emotionally charged experience in a gathering of humanity without parallel in history.

  The city of the Prophet Mohammed’s birth has always drawn its potency for Muslims from both the story of his God-given revelations there in the seventh century and the totemic status of the Kaaba, the cube of black granite which is considered the House of God, at the heart of the pilgrimage. All Muslims who were physically and financially able to do so were required by the Quran to perform the hajj to Mecca, the only place in the world where such a visit was obligatory. The subsequent centuries of tradition and pilgrimage have only added greater brilliance to the city’s unique lustre within the Islamic world. Mecca is the immutable and undisputed centre of Islam, the lodestar to which the world’s Muslims direct their prayers; the Kaaba the single point on the planet around which pilgrims literally revolve.

  Today a clock tower rears 600 metres above the Kaaba, completely dwarfing the sacred monument that inspired its erection. Were a pigeon to leave its seed-hunting colleagues at ground level for a few minutes and flutter up to these dizzying heights, it would stare down to the north at what might be taken for a vast sports stadium teeming with white-robed fans moving in procession around a rectangular object. Yet this is no sports arena. The Abraj Al Bait, or Makkah Royal Clock Tower, a skyscraper complex of luxury hotels, apartments and shopping malls, complete with heliports, jacuzzis, saunas, steam rooms, chocolate rooms, beauty parlours, business centres, ballrooms and twenty-four-hour butler service, looms over Islam’s holiest mosque, the Masjid al Haram, or Sacred Mosque, and the cube at its heart, the Kaaba. Once a year, in the world’s greatest display of organized religion, a swirl of humanity circumambulates seven times around this thirteen-metre high stone block, directing its collective prayers to the Almighty.

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  Islam

  An Introduction

  • Catharina Raudvere(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • I.B. Tauris

    (Publisher)

  With its caravans to Syria trading in silver and leather, it became an active part of the transit operations in the region. The Quraysh controlled the area of southern Hijaz, where the settlement called Mecca was situated. The site was not a fertile oasis but, typically for the southern area, dependent on supplies from the outside. Most importantly, the Quraysh was part of a regional The Early History of Islam 31 web of alliances and conflicts, and Mecca started to serve as a transit point between east and west in terms of trade and cultural contacts. Mecca is the indisputable focal point of the Islamic world: it is the direction for salat , qibla , and it is the destination of the mandatory pilgrimage. Since 1932, Mecca has been part of Saudi Arabia, but for many centuries before that it was part of the Ottoman Empire. It has remained, beside its religious importance, a meeting point and a centre for trade. The shrine at Mecca, the Kaaba, is a pre-Islamic construction, but today the grand hajj mosque includes the ancient Kaaba as part of its premises. Map 1 The Arabian Peninsula at the time of Muhammad’s appearance as a prophet. Islam: An Introduction 32 Mecca was not only a commercial centre. The local shrine, the Kaaba (meaning ‘cube’), attracted crowds of pilgrims, and even Christian Arabs found their way to the sanctuary. In pre-Islamic times, it was most likely dedicated to the god Hubal, who is said to have had a large statue erected at its centre. By the time of Muhammad, however, it had become the site of worship of a multitude of local deities, foremost among them being the highest god, Allah ( al-Lah , the God). This god was of high importance, but he did not necessarily stand in opposition to other, lesser divine powers that were worshipped here. The area around the sanctuary was proclaimed a safe area ( haram , literally forbidden or secluded) demanding certain behaviour, and the peace was to be protected, an honorary duty taken on by the Quraysh clan.

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  Desperately Seeking Paradise

  Journeys of a Sceptical Muslim

  • Ziauddin Sardar(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • Granta Books

    (Publisher)

  I started working at the Hajj Research Centre with great relish. Mecca is the light that still remains with me, the shimmering, flawless light that illumines the still point to which all Muslims turn. It is what I remember most of my first visit to the Haramain, the sacred precincts at the heart of Mecca. Mecca, the birthplace of Muhammad, the site of the Holy Kaa’ba, is the prime focus of the Muslim world. The profound intensity of the moment burst upon me as I stepped out from the colonnaded mosque into the great open space surrounding the Kaa’ba. A little voice within me, overpowered and amazed, whispered ‘I am here.’ Before me was the great cube-shaped building, draped in black cloth edged with gold embroidered calligraphy: the Kaa’ba. No image more familiar, no location better known, no direction more sought-after exists for any Muslim anywhere at any time. I was here. The Kaa’ba stood silent and still. I could hardly breathe as I walked out into the pool of light and radiant heat; I felt as if every butterfly everywhere was flapping its wings and I was wafted along on the updraught. I moved, unconscious of my movement, to make the journey seven times around the Kaa’ba. In that heart of light I was enfolded in what it is to be me, what it is to be a Muslim. One can live with the awe of that moment far better than one can describe or communicate it.

  The Kaa’ba is the pre-eminent symbol of Islam. It is a house of worship of The God, believed to have been built and dedicated for this purpose by Prophet Abraham. Events in the life of this Patriarch of Judaism, Christianity and Islam underpin and define the traditional rituals of being in Mecca. This fixed point provides Muslims with their sense of direction: five times a day, the faithful turn to face not only Mecca but the Kaa’ba within Mecca, when they pray. From every point on earth a Muslim seeks an orientation towards this central place, the starting point of dedication to The God and his guidance of values and ethics, to which they must constantly return on the daily journey through life. It is also the ultimate goal, the embodiment of the spiritual objective to hold a constant course through the vagaries of life’s trials and tribulations. It is a definite, finite goal of spiritual endeavour since every Muslim, once in their lifetime, if they can afford it, is required to perform the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, when they will each take that walk seven times around the Kaa’ba, united in awe, humbled by the experience.

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  The Adventures of Ibn Battuta

  A Muslim Traveler of the Fourteenth Century, With a New Preface

  • Ross E. Dunn(Author)
  • 2012(Publication Date)
  • University of California Press

    (Publisher)

  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 In-dians, 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. When a pilgrim reached Mecca and circuited the Ka'ba, he still had, in an important religious sense, twelve miles to go before he would terminate his sacred journey. No Muslim was privileged to claim the title al-Hajj until he had traveled through the desert ravines east of the city to the plain of 'Arafat and, on the ninth day of Dhu 1-Hijja, stood before the Mount of Mercy, the place where Adam prayed and where in 632 Muhammad preached his farewell sermon to his pristine congregation of believers. This annual re-treat into the Meccan wilderness embraces the complex of cere-monies that makes up the hajj proper, or Greater Pilgrimage, which Muslims regard as separate from (though also including) the rituals of the tawaf and the sa'y. The Meccan rites, performed alone and at any time of the year, are called the 'umra, that is, the Visit or Lesser Pilgrimage. Before Islam, Mecca was the center for a yearly pilgrimage of Arabian tribes that was purely pagan. The Prophet retained some of those rites but utterly transformed their purpose into a Mecca 77 celebration of Abraham's unyielding monotheism.

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  Muslim Devotional Art in India

  • Yousuf Saeed(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge India

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 1 The Image of Mecca in India

  The most common icons found in almost every Muslim household are the images of two famed Arab shrines, the Ka’ba, a cubical structure draped in black and situated in Mecca, and the Gumbad-e khizra, the green dome in Medina over the mausoleum of Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon Him) (Fig. 1.1 ). Although one is not supposed to worship them or their images, the reverence for and the desire to make a ziyārat (pilgrimage) to them is strongly instilled in the mind of every believing Muslim. Even qibla , the direction to Mecca, acquires a centrality in a Muslim’s daily life. Besides offering the customary five-times-a-day namāz (prayers) strictly facing the Ka’ba, some Muslims even find it disrespectful to lie down with their feet towards it. Frequent mentions of Mecca and Medina, along with the seerah (biography) of Prophet Muhammad and Islam’s early history, remain an integral part of every Muslim’s upbringing. These have also been referred to in much of devotional Islamic literature, in prose and poetry, in countless vernacular languages. Thus, for an Indian or a non-Arab Muslim, situated thousands of miles from these holy shrines that he or she may probably never see in real life unless fortunate enough to make a pilgrimage, simply gazing at the images of the Ka’ba and Medina fills an ocular void and further arouses the desire to visit them.

  The Hajj became obligatory for Muslims at the time of Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD, although the Ka’ba had existed as a centre of pilgrimage and prayers for many centuries before the advent of Islam. Some Muslims believe it was originally built by Adam, the first Prophet, although it later got destroyed in the great flood at the time of Noah. The existing shrine, it is believed, was constructed or renovated by Prophet Abraham (early 2nd millennium BC) when he came to settle in the region after being driven out from Iraq, Syria and Palestine for practising and preaching his new faith. Following this, Mecca became a great centre of pilgrimage and trade, attracting thousands of pilgrims from in and around Arabia. Many existing rituals and sacred sites of the Hajj pilgrimage still reflect events from the life of Abraham, his wife Hajira (Hager) and son Ismail (Ishmael), including the miraculous springing of the water-well called Zamzam1

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  Meccan Trade and the Rise of Islam

  • Patricia Crone(Author)
  • 2015(Publication Date)
  • Gorgias Press

    (Publisher)

  8 T H E S A N C T U A R Y A N D M E C C A N T R A D E The genesis of Meccan trade is conventionally explained with reference to the fact that Mecca was a baram or sanctuary area. On the one hand, it was the object of an annual pilgrimage. It thus became a pilgrim fair, a typical. . . combination of pilgrim center and marketplace, as Don-ner puts it.' On the other hand it was inviolable, no bloodshed being permitted within it. It was thus apt to attract settlers and visitors all the year round, and according to Watt it became a commercial center be-cause it was a place to which men could come without fear of molesta-tion. 2 It is not always clear in the secondary literature whether it was the annual pilgrimage or the permanent inviolability, or both, that stim-ulated the growth of trade; nor is it always clear when the sanctuary be-gan to have its stimulating effect: according to some, Mecca was a cultic and commercial center even in antiquity, though it is more commonly said only to have developed into one on its occupation by Quraysh. ' There is not, however, any disagreement on the basic point: one way or the other, Meccan baram and Meccan trade were intimately linked, as practically every author on the subject states. 4 But why has this propo-sition gained axiomatic status? As regards antiquity, the proposition is gratuitous in that we do not know anything about trade in Mecca before its occupation by Quraysh. The belief arises from the identification of Mecca with Ptolemy's Ma-coraba. But this identification is untenable, as has already been shown; ' F. M. Donner, The Early Islamic Conquests , p. 51. 1 Watt, Muhammad at Mecca, p. 3. 3 Mecca is conjectured to have been a major cultic and commercial centre even in antiq-uity in Grohmann, Makoraba; similarly Hitti, Capital Cities , pp. 4 f.; and Donner be-lieves it to have functioned as a pilgrim fair for centuries before the rise of Islam ( Conquests, p. 51).

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  Society and Religion from Jahiliyya to Islam

  • M.J. Kister(Author)
  • 2022(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Muraqqa'. 14 About the location of Isar and Ni'ila see U. Rubin, The Ka'ba. Aspects of its ritual functions and position in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, JSAI (forthcoming) ad notes 49-50, 121, 172-173, 175. 15 Al-Fasi, Shifd a/-ghardm bi-akhbdri l-ba1adi 1-~rdm (Cairo, 1956), II, 54. 36 Mecca AND THE TRIBES OF ARABIA The stories concerning Abii Ghubshan and Qu~ayy, or ~uwaylim and Mughira, are but two instances in a chain of reports relating to the incessant struggle of some tribal groups associated with Quraysh to establish fair and honest relations with Meccan clans and the strenuous efforts of some Meccan leaders to secure justice at Mecca itself. Terms like baghy, khasf, ~ulm and jawr appearing in reports of this kind enable us to reach an understanding of the character of the struggle against iniquity and oppression . • The period of the end of the sixth and the beginning of the seventh century was characterized by intertribal conflicts and by the pressure of the Byzantine and Persian Empires (through their vassal states) on the tribal divisions aimed at widening their influence and tightening their control over the Arabian peninsula. Mecca extended in that period its commercial relations, becoming a centre of economic activity for the tribes of the Arabian peninsula. and strengthened its ties with other centres like Medina and Tii ,if; transactions of considerable extent involving the purchase of landed property and financial enterprises were carried out by Meccan businessmen. 16 The commercial co-operation of the merchants of the cities (like Mecca and Medina) with the tribes called for acumen, flexibility and close knowledge of intertribal relations. This can be seen in the story ofQays b. Zuhayr al-'Absi: 17 when he decided to prepare a raid against the Banii < Amir in order to avenge the murder of his father, he set out to Medina and approached Ul].ayl].a b. ai-Juliil]. al-Awsi, asking that he should sell him weapons.

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  The Holy City of Medina

  Sacred Space in Early Islamic Arabia

  • Harry Munt(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Cambridge University Press

    (Publisher)

  1 Introduction 1 For a study of modern pilgrimage to Medina, see Behrens, Garten des Paradieses, 227–76. 2 EI 2 , s.v. ‘Kha﻽ dim al-Haramayn’ (B. Lewis). Throughout Islamic history sacred spaces have always held immense political, religious and cultural significance; the king of Saudi Arabia today holds as his official title khaﻼdim al-h￵aramayn, ‘Guardian of the Two Sanctuaries’ (Mecca and Medina), and more than two million Muslims now travel from all over the world each year to make the pilgrimage to Mecca. Many of them will also visit Medina. 1 As the town that offered the Prophet protection when his own people denied him, as the loca- tion of the first Muslim polity, the first mosque, Muh￷ammad’s sanctuary (h￵aram) and his grave, and as the earliest centre of the Islamic empire at the time when the Muslim armies were conquering most of the Middle East, Medina’s position in the salvation history of the Muslim commu- nity is clear today. The continued political valence of the title khaﻼ dim al-h￵ aramayn – a title apparently first used by Saladin in an inscription of 587/1191 in Jerusalem 2 – and the number of contemporary visitors demonstrate the staggering success of those who have worked over the centuries to patron- ise Medina’s sacred spaces and to promote its widely accepted status as a holy city. In such modern studies as exist of Medina’s sacred space(s) and its history as a holy city for Muslims worldwide, scholars commonly assert that the town was ‘sanctified’ originally through the Prophet’s emi- gration (Ar. hijra) there from Mecca in 1/622, his establishment of a h￵ aram there, and then further by his death and burial there. Albert Arazi, in a The Holy City of Medina 2 stimulating article, summarised this view succinctly: ‘The hijra to Medina, ancient Yathrib, gave that town a new dimension, that of sanctity.’ Then, after the establishment of a h￵ aram there and with the placement of Muh￷ ammad’s grave there, Medina attained ‘a surplus of sanctity’.

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