The Swiss traveller was
prevented by sickness from visiting it.
The “Jazb al-Kulub” affords the
following account of a celebrated eruption, beginning on the Salkh
(last day) of Jamadi al-Awwal, and ending on the evening of the third
of Jamadi al-Akhir, A.H. 654. Terrible earthquakes, accompanied by a
thundering noise, shook the town; from fourteen to eighteen were
observed each night. On the third of Jamadi al-Akhir, after the Isha
prayers, a fire burst out in the direction of Al-Hijaz (eastward); it
resembled a vast city with a turretted and battlemental fort, in which
men appeared drawing the flame about, as it were, whilst it roared,
burned, and melted like a sea everything that came in its way.
Presently red and bluish streams, bursting from it, ran close to
Al-Madinah; and, at the same time, the city was fanned by a cooling
zephyr from the same direction. Al-Kistlani, an eye-witness, asserts
that “the brilliant light of the volcano made the face of the country as
bright as day; and the interior of the Harim was as if the sun shone
upon it, so that men worked and required nought of the sun and moon
(the latter of which was also eclipsed?).” Several saw the light at
Meccah, at Tayma (in Nijd, six days’ journey from Al-Madinah), and at
Busra, of Syria, reminding men of the Prophet’s saying, “A fire shall burst
forth from the direction of Al-Hijaz; its light shall make visible the
necks of the camels at Busra.” Historians relate that the length of the
stream was four parasangs (from fourteen to sixteen miles), its breadth
four miles (56? to the degree), and its depth about nine feet. It
flowed like a torrent with the waves of a sea; the rocks, melted by its
heat, stood up as a wall, and, for a time, it prevented the passage of
Badawin, who, coming from that direction, used to annoy the citizens.
Jamal Matari, one of the historians of Al-Madinah, relates that the
flames, which destroyed the stones, spared the trees; and he asserts
that some men, sent by the governor to inspect the fire, felt no heat;
also that the feathers of an arrow shot into it were burned whilst the
shaft remained whole. This he attributes to the sanctity of the trees
within the Harim. On the contrary, Al-Kistlani asserts the fire to have
been so vehement that no one could approach within two arrow-flights,
and that it melted the outer half of a rock beyond the limits of the
sanctuary, leaving the inner parts unscathed. The Kazi, the Governor,
and the citizens engaged in devotional exercises, and during the whole
length of the Thursday and the Friday nights, all, even the women and
children, with bare heads wept round the Prophet’s tomb. Then the lava
current turned northwards. (I remarked on the way to Ohod signs of a
lava-field.) This current ran, according to some, three entire months.
Al-Kistlani dates its beginning on Friday, 6 Jamadi al-Akhir, and its
cessation on Sunday, 27 Rajab:
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