Still Remained

[P.31] to me the comfort of reflecting that possibly at Meccah some opportunity of crossing the Peninsula might present itself.

At any rate I had the certainty of seeing the strange wild country of the Hijaz, and of being present at the ceremonies of the Holy City. I must request the reader to bear with a Visitation once more: we shall conclude it with a ride to Al-Bakia.[FN#6] This venerable spot is frequented by the pious every day after the prayer at the Prophet’s Tomb, and especially on Fridays.

Our party started one morning,—on donkeys, as usual, for my foot was not yet strong,—along the Darb al-Janazah round the Southern wall of the town. The locomotion was decidedly slow, principally in consequence of the tent-ropes which the Hajis had pinned down literally all over the plain, and falls were by no means unfrequent. At last we arrived at the end of the Darb, where I committed myself by mistaking the decaying place of those miserable schismatics the Nakhawilah[FN#7] for Al-Bakia, the glorious cemetery of the Saints. Hamid corrected my blunder with tartness, to which I replied as tartly, that in our country—Afghanistan—we burned the body of every heretic upon whom we could lay our hands. This truly Islamitic custom was heard with general applause, and as the little dispute ended, we stood at the open gate of Al-Bakia. Then having dismounted I sat down on a low Dakkah or stone bench within the walls, to obtain a general view and to prepare for the most fatiguing of the Visitations.

There is a tradition that seventy thousand, or according to others a hundred thousand saints, all with faces like full moons, shall cleave on the last day the yawning bosom

[p.32] of Al-Bakia.[FN#8] About ten thousand of the Ashab (Companions of the Prophet) and innumerable Sadat are here buried: their graves are forgotten, because, in the olden time, tombstones were not placed over the last resting-places of mankind. The first of flesh who shall arise is Mohammed, the second Abu Bakr, the third Omar, then the people of Al-Bakia (amongst whom is Osman, the fourth Caliph), and then the incol[ae] of the Jannat al-Ma’ala, the Meccan cemetery. The Hadis, “whoever dies at the two Harims shall rise with the Sure on the Day of judgment,” has made these spots priceless in value. And even upon earth they might be made a mine of wealth. Like the catacombs at Rome, Al-Bakia is literally full of the odour of sanctity, and a single item of the great aggregate here would render any other Moslem town famous. It is a pity that this people refuses to exhume its relics.

The first person buried in Al-Bakia was Osman bin Maz’un, the first of the Muhajirs, who died at Al-Madinah. In the month of Sha’aban, A.H. 3, the Prophet kissed the forehead of the corpse and ordered it to be interred within sight of his abode.[FN#9] In those days the field was covered with the tree Gharkad; the vegetation was cut down, the ground was levelled, and Osman was placed in the centre of the new cemetery. With his own hands Mohammed planted two large upright stones at the head and the feet of his faithful follower[FN#10]; and in process of time a dome covered the spot. Ibrahim, the Prophet’s infant second

[p.33] son, was laid by Osman’s side, after which Al-Bakia became a celebrated cemetery.

The Burial-place of the Saints is an irregular oblong surrounded by walls which are connected with the suburb at their south-west angle. The Darb al-Janazah separates it from the enceinte of the town, and the eastern Desert Road beginning from the Bab al-Jumah bounds it on the North. Around it palm plantations seem to flourish. It is small, considering the extensive use made of it: all that die at Al-Madinah, strangers as well as natives, except only heretics and schismatics, expect to be interred in it. It must be choked with corpses, which it could never contain did not the Moslem style of burial greatly favour rapid decomposition; and it has all the inconveniences of “intramural sepulture.” The gate is small and ignoble; a mere doorway in the wall. Inside there are no flower-plots, no tall trees, in fact none of the refinements which lightens the gloom of a Christian burial-place: the buildings are simple, they might even be called mean. Almost all are the common Arab Mosque, cleanly whitewashed, and looking quite new. The ancient monuments were levelled to the ground by Sa’ad the Wahhabi and his puritan followers, who waged pitiless warfare against what must have appeared to them magnificent mausolea, deeming as they did a loose heap of stones sufficient for a grave. In Burckhardt’s time the whole place was a “confused accumulation of heaps of earth, wide pits, and rubbish, without a singular regular tomb-stone.” The present erections owe their existence, I was told, to the liberality of the Sultans Abd al-Hamid and Mahmud.

A poor pilgrim has lately started on his last journey, and his corpse, unattended by friends or mourners, is carried upon the shoulders of hired buriers into the cemetery. Suddenly they stay their rapid steps, and throw the body upon the ground. There is a life-like pliability

[p.34] about it as it falls, and the tight cerements so define the outlines that the action makes me shudder. It looks almost as if the dead were conscious of what is about to occur. They have forgotten their tools; one man starts to fetch them, and three sit down to smoke. After a time a shallow grave is hastily scooped out.[FN#11] The corpse is packed in it with such unseemly haste that earth touches it in all directions,—cruel carelessness among Moslems, who believe this to torture the sentient frame.[FN#12] One comfort suggests itself.

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