Pilgrims en route Mecca would attend smaller fairs and
festivals before arriving at the Sanctuary for the main ceremony. A poetry
competition would be held in nearby oasis town of Taif, where poets across
Hejaz and other parts of Arabia would assemble and demonstrate their oratory
skills. Desert fables, homages to Gods and odes to mistresses were narrated in
huge gatherings. The best poem would be mounted on the Kaaba. After the contest
the poets would join other pilgrims— a swarm of shaman dancers dancing in
trance, some sorcerers juggling their skills, enchanters rolling their bodies
along the dusty paths leading to Kaaba; the festive liturgy running till late
in the night —the fire lighting up the horizons of Mecca and its surroundings.
The markets would be buzz with Arabian dyes, perfumes and rugs from far off
Nabatean lands. Musicians with their tambourines loose hair flying in wreath
would fill the tiny alleys of Mecca. Heretics perched on nooks and corners of
Meccan markets mumbling within. The city abuzz with life and trade.
Mecca has a long history. Gibbon in his seminal work
‘Decline and Fall of Roman Empire’ mentions how Greeks knew about Kaaba. Greek
historians have claimed to write about a temple in Arabia which is sacred to
Aribis- the desert dwellers- a name Greeks gave to the people of Arabia.
Mecca has had numerous names. The earliest known name is the
biblical ‘Baca’.Baca in Arabic transforms to ‘lack of stream’. Indeed Mecca has
always been a dry place.
Jurham was a tribe into whom Prophet Abraham’s son Ishmael
had married into. Over the years after prophet Ishmael ,Jurhams controlled
Mecca and the sanctuary. This had continued for few centuries, before Khuza
another tribe took over Kaaba. It is in the reign of Khuza, Amr of Luhayy that
paganism began in Kaaba. It began when Amr received a deity of Hubal as a gift.
He ordered to place the deity in the Kaaba. Other families also proceeded to
place their idols in the Kaaba including the Arab pantheon and three daughters
of God: al Lat, Manat and al-Uzzat. This was around at the beginning of
Christian era.
Consequently after next 400-500 years, in 5th century AD,
Quraysh — a tribe of Ishmael’s descendants come into the picture. Zayd bin
Kilab who was fondly called as Qusayy ‘the little stranger’ married into an
elite Khoza family in Mecca and took over its reins. He was very intelligent
and entire Mecca had grown fond of him. Qusayy regarded himself as the direct
descendent of Ishmael and as such someone who was born to look after Kaaba.
Qusayy is also regarded to have re-discovered the Zam Zam well, after being in
oblivion for centuries. Qusayy was the direct forefather of a man who in
another hundred years was to change the destiny of Meccans and entire Hejaz.
The journey to Mecca and Haj is compulsory to all Muslims.
Religious obligation aside, one can find a numerous reasoning logic for such an
arduous pillar of faith. For how I see it, the main pilgrimage- Haj or the
lesser pilgrimage- Umrah, is meant to instil travel bug in Muslims. To travel
across thousands of kilometres and experience the diversity of God’s creation
in His own house. Mecca is probably the first city every Muslim hears of. Right
from our childhood it is one city and place that finds a way into our
consciousness. The sight of cuboid swathed in a black cloth is imprinted in our
minds. What it exactly meant was not known to me.
Over the years I’ve carried my battles with faith and
questions that surround me. By no means being someone very religious. The inner
strife has always followed me in matters of faith and belief. Amongst this was
the many time retold rundown which I had somehow convinced myself of. The
ostentatiousness craze led by Saudi government had defiled the value of Kaaba.
I believed the spiritual sacredness no longer exists in Mecca. I couldn’t
understand. Early this month when I visited Mecca on account of Umrah, I
carried these premonitions and biases with me. I performed my first Umrah late
into the night when we first reached Mecca.
I was largely unfazed, still grappling with scepticism. What
brings a sea of men and women to this landscape, which is not only harsh but
unwelcoming too? The Hejaz mountains which surround Kaaba have the harshest
terrain; sharp knife edged rocky surface. In course of my time at Mecca I
realized, Kaaba gives you what you bring to it. My subsequent trips to Kaaba
and Haram over the next few days did something to me. What exactly, I’m not
sure. Perhaps, it is those in explainable feelings that have no physical
reality to it. Standing tall one afternoon, under bright mid Arabian sun, in
front of this cuboid, which has been there at that place since thousands of
years, the sweat and belief of Prophets mixed in its foundation, the stillness
of hot smudgy air around it broken by a pigeon flight, the circumambulating
devotees chanting holy verses, in those tiny fleeting seconds Kaaba revealed
itself to me. The magic under its sanctuary was well and truly over me. The
noor of an omnipresent God. HE lights it up in the heart of his devotee, and
what is unseen is disclosed. The nothingness of God’s radiance and the soul of
a pilgrim are alight. HE and you become ONE.
