We Found A Swarming Crowd In The Narrow Road Opposite The “Jamrat Al-Akabah,[FN#3]” Or, As It Is

Vulgarly called, the Shaytan al-Kabir—the “Great Devil.” These names distinguish it from another pillar, the “Wusta,” or “Central

Place,” (of stoning,) built in the middle of Muna, and a third at the eastern end, “Al-Aula,” or the “First Place.[FN#4]” The “Shaytan al-Kabir” is a dwarf buttress of rude

[p.204] masonry, about eight feet high by two and a half broad, placed against a rough wall of stones at the Meccan entrance to Muna. As the ceremony of “Ramy,” or Lapidation, must be performed on the first day by all pilgrims between sunrise and sunset, and as the fiend was malicious enough to appear in a rugged Pass,[FN#5] the crowd makes the place dangerous. On one side of the road, which is not forty feet broad, stood a row of shops belonging principally to barbers. On the other side is the rugged wall against which the pillar stands, with a chevaux de frise of Badawin and naked boys. The narrow space was crowded with pilgrims, all struggling like drowning men to approach as near as possible to the Devil; it would have been easy to run over the heads of the mass. Amongst them were horsemen with rearing chargers. Badawin on wild camels, and grandees on mules and asses, with outrunners, were breaking a way by assault and battery. I had read Ali Bey’s self-felicitations upon escaping this place with “only two wounds in the left leg,” and I had duly provided myself with a hidden dagger. The precaution was not useless. Scarcely had my donkey entered the crowd than he was overthrown by a dromedary, and I found myself under the stamping and roaring beast’s stomach. Avoiding being trampled upon by a judicious use of the knife, I lost no time in escaping from a place so ignobly dangerous. Some Moslem travellers assert, in proof of the sanctity of the spot, that no Moslem is ever killed here: Meccans assured me that accidents are by no means rare.

Presently the boy Mohammed fought his way out of the crowd with a bleeding nose. We both sat down upon a bench before a barber’s booth, and, schooled by adversity,

[p.205] awaited with patience an opportunity. Finding an opening, we approached within about five cubits of the place, and holding each stone between the thumb and the forefinger[FN#6] of the right hand, we cast it at the pillar, exclaiming, “In the name of Allah, and Allah is Almighty! (I do this) in Hatred of the Fiend and to his Shame.” After which came the Tahlil and the “Sana,” or praise to Allah. The seven stones being duly thrown, we retired, and entering the barber’s booth, took our places upon one of the earthern benches around it. This was the time to remove the Ihram or pilgrim’s garb, and to return to Ihlal, the normal state of Al-Islam.

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