Mecca - Part 3

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Mecca - Part 3

 

(p.31) Trade and religion were thus inextricably combined in Mecca. The

pilgrimage to Mecca was the climax of the suq cycle, and the Quraysh

reconstructed the cult and architecture of the sanctuary so that it became a

spiritual center for all the Arab tribes. Even though the Bedouin were not much

interested in the gods, each tribe had its own presiding deity, usually

represented by a stone effigy. The Quraysh collected the totems of the tribes

that belonged to their confederacy and installed them in the Haram so that the

tribesmen could only worship their patronal deities when they visited Mecca. The

sanctity of Kabah was thus essential to the success and survival of the Quraysh,

and their competitors understood this. (p.32) In order to attract pilgrims and

business away from the Quraysh, the governor of Abyssinia and Yemen constructed

a rival sanctuary in Sana'a. Then, in 547, he led an army to Mecca to prove that

the city was not, after all, immune from warfare. But, it was said, his war

elephant fell upon its knees when it reached the outskirts of Mecca, and refused

to attack the Haram. Impressed by this miracle, the Abyssinians returned home.

The Year of the Elephant became a symbol of Mecca's sacred inviolability. [14]

 

But the cult was not simply an empty, cynical exploitation of piety. The rituals

of the hajj also gave the Arab pilgrims a profound experience. As they converged

on Mecca at the end of the suq cycle, there was a sense of achievement and

excitement. The caravans were checked by the Quraysh, their camels relieved of

their burdens, and, after paying a modest fee, the merchants and their servants

were free to pay their respects to the Haram. As they made their way through the

narrow streets of the suburbs, they uttered ritual cries, announcing their

presence to the gods who were awaiting their arrival. After their long trek

around the peninsula, this reunion with the sacred symbols of their tribes felt

like a homecoming. When they reached the Kabah, surrounded by the 360 tribal

totems, they began to perform the traditional rites in Mecca and its environs,

which may originally have been devised to bring on the winter rains. They jogged

seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwah, to the east of the Kabah; ran

in a body to the hollow of Muzdalifah, the home of the thunder god; made an

all-night vigil on the plain beside Mount 'Arafat, sixteen miles outside the

city; hurled pebbles at three pillars in the valley of Mina; and finally, at the

end of their pilgrimage, sacrificed their most valuable female camels, symbols

of their wealth and--hence--of themselves.

 

(p.33) The most famous ritual of the hajj was the 'tawaf', seven

circumambulations of the Kabah in a clockwise direction, a stylized reenactment

of the circular trade route round Arabia, which gave the Arabs' mercantile

activities a spiritual dimension. The tawaf became a popular devotional

exercise, and citizens and their guests would perform it all the year round. The

structure of the Haram acquired an archetypal significance, which has been found

in the shrines of other cities in the ancient world. [15] The Kabah, with its

four corners representing the four cardinal directions, symbolized the world.

Embedded in its eastern wall was the Black Stone, a piece of basalt of meteoric

origin, which had once fallen brilliantly from the sky, linking heaven and

earth. As the pilgrims jogged around the huge granite cube, following the course

of the sun around the earth [**], they put themselves in harmony with the

fundamental order of the cosmos. The circle is a common symbol of totality, and

the practice of circumambulation, where you constantly come back to your

starting point, induces a sense of periodicity and regularity. By circling round

and round the Kabah, pilgrims learned to find their true orientation and their

interior center; the steady rhythm of the jog gradually emptied their minds of

peripheral thoughts and helped them to enter a more meditative state.

 

[**] [Folks, what Karen Armstrong writes as, " following the course of the sun

around the earth " .... would it not be more accurate to say, " following the

course of the earth around the sun? " i don't know if the Qur'an clarifies this,

or not. In any case, Christianity has been historically geocentric, as this URL

explains]:

 

http://www.vexen.co.uk/religion/christianity_astronomy.html

 

The reformed rites made Mecca the center of Arabia. (p.34) Where other pilgrims

had to leave their homelands and journey to remote sites, the Arabs had no need

to leave the peninsula, which remained a law unto itself. All this reinforced

the centrality of Mecca as the focus of the Arab world. [16] The city was also

isolated and this gave the Arabs a rare freedom. Neither Persia nor Byzantium,

the great powers of the region, had any interest in the difficult terrain of

Arabia, so the Quraysh could create a modern economy without imperial control.

The world passed through Mecca, but did not stay long enough to interfere. Arabs

were able to develop their own ideology and could interpret the knowledge and

expertise of their more sophisticated neighbors as they chose. They were not

pressured to convert to an alien religion or conform to official orthodoxy. The

closed circle of both the trade cycle and the hajj rituals symbolized their

proud self-sufficiency, which, as the years passed, would become a mark of their

urban culture.

 

Their separation from the great powers meant that the Meccan economy was not

damaged by their decline in fortune; indeed, the Quraysh were able to profit

from it. By 570, the year of Muhammad's birth, Persia and Byzantium were locked

in a debilitating series of wars with one another that would fatally weaken both

empires. Syria and Mesopotamia became a battleground, many of the trade routes

were abandoned, and Mecca took control of all the intermediary trade between

north and south. [17] The Quraysh had become even more powerful, yet some were

beginning to feel that they were paying too high a price for their success. As

the sixth century drew to a close, the city was in the grip of a spiritual and

moral crisis.

 

The old communal spirit had been torn apart by the market economy, which

depended upon ruthless competition, greed, and individual enterprise. (p.35)

Families now vied with one another for wealth and prestige. The less successful

clans* felt that they were being pushed to the wall. Instead of sharing their

wealth generously, people were hoarding their money and building private

fortunes. They not only ignored the plight of the poorer members of the tribe,

but exploited the rights of orphans and widows, absorbing their inheritance into

their own estates. The prosperous were naturally delighted with their new

security; they believed that their wealth had saved them from the destitution

and misery of badawah [nomadic life]. But those who had fallen behind in the

stampede for financial success felt lost and disoriented. The principles of

muruwah [chivalric code of the Bedouin] seemed incompatible with market forces,

and many felt thrust into a spiritual limbo. The old ideals had not been

replaced by anything of equal value, and the ingrained communal ethos told them

that this rampant individualism would damage the tribe, which could only survive

if its members pooled all their resources.

 

* The terms " clan " and " tribe " are not easy to distinguish from one another, but

here " clan " refers to a family group 'within' the tribe.

 

Muhammad (Prophet For Our Time)

Chapter 1, 'Mecca', p. 31-35

Karen Armstrong

Harper Perennial - London, New York, Toronto and Sydney

ISBN-13 978-0-00-723248-2

ISBN-10 0-00-723248-9

 

Notes:

 

[14] Qur'an 105.

 

[15] Johannes Sloek, 'Devotional Language', trans. Henrick Mossin (Berlin and

New York, 1996), 89-90.

 

[16] Bamyeh, 'Social Origins of Islam', 32.

 

[17] Ibid., 43.