of whose character we know very little. We are here dealing with a very mixed race of people who have probably preserved traditions handed down to them from several distinct sources. A few facts stand out fairly distinctly. The fishermen along the coast of the Peninsula sacrifice to four great spirits of the sea who go by many names but whose scope of authority is always the same; one is the Spirit of Bays, another that of Banks or Beaches, another that of Headlands, and the last and fiercest is the Spirit of Tideways or Midcurrents. Most of the designations given to these ancient divinities are merely descriptive of their functions. So long as things go well, the names of the four Moslem Archangels are considered sufficient; if things go badly Sanscrit words are used; if matters become desperate, the fisherman throws prudence to the winds and appeals to the spirits in pure Indonesian terms which they cannot fail to understand."7

7" Malay Beliefs," pp. 26-27.

CHAPTER VIII

PAGAN PRACTICES IN CONNECTION WITH THE PILGRIMAGE

WHEN We consider Mecca, Mohammed's words of prophecy in the second chapter of his book seem to have been literally fulfilled: "So we have made you the center of the nations that you should bear witness to men." The old pagan pantheon has become the religious sanctuary and the goal of universal pilgrimage for one-seventh of the human race.

From Sierra Leone to Canton, and from Tobolsk to Cape Town, the faithful spread their prayer carpets, build their houses (in fulfillment of an important tradition, even their outhouses!) and bury their dead toward the meridian of Mecca. If the Moslem world could be viewed from an aëroplane, the observer would see concentric circles of living worshipers covering an ever-widening area, and one would also see vast areas of Moslem cemeteries with every grave dug toward the sacred city.

The earliest settlements at Mecca were undoubtedly due to the fact that the caravan trade from South Arabia northward found here a stopping place near the spring of Zem Zem, long before the time of Mohammed, just as the early Roman settlements at Wiesbaden and other places in Germany were so located because of the medicinal waters.

The sacred Mosque, Masjid al Haram, with the Ka'aba as its center, is located in the middle of the city. Mecca lies in a hot, sandy valley, absolutely without verdure and surrounded by rocky, barren hills, destitute of trees or even shrubs. The valley is about 300 feet wide and 4,000 feet long, and slopes towards the south. The Ka'aba or House of

God (Beit Allah) is located in the bed of the valley. All

the streets slope toward it, and it occupies, as it were, the pit of a theater.

The Ka'aba proper stands in an oblong space 250 paces long and 200 broad, surrounded by colonnades, which are used as schools and as a general meeting place for pilgrims. The outer enclosure has nineteen gates and six minarets; within the enclosure is the well of Zem Zem, the great pulpit, the staircase used to enter the Ka'aba door, which is high above the ground, and two small mosques called al Kubattain. The remainder of the space is occupied by pavements and gravel, where prayers are said by the four orthodox sects, each having its own allotted space.

In the southeast corner of the Ka'aba, about five feet from the ground, is the famous Black Stone, the oldest treasure of Mecca. The stone is a fragment resembling black volcanic rock, sprinkled with reddish crystals, and worn smooth by the touch of centuries. It was undoubtedly an aërolite and owes its reputation to its fall from the sky. Moslem historians do not deny that it was an object of worship before Islam. In Moslem tradition it is connected with the history of the patriarchs, beginning as far back as Adam.

The word Ka'aba signifies a cube, although the measurements, according to Ali Bey, one of the earliest writers who gives us a scientific account of the pilgrim ceremonies, do not justify its being so called. Its height is thirty-four feet four inches, and the four sides measure thirty-eight feet four inches, thirty-seven feet two inches, thirty-one feet, seven inches, and twenty-nine feet. The cloth covering is renewed every year. At present it is made of silk and cotton tissue woven at Khurunfish, the factory site in Cairo. The time of departure of the annual procession which takes it to Mecca is one of the great feast days in Cairo.

Formerly, we are told, the whole of the Koran text was woven into the Ka'aba covering. Now the inscription con

tains the words, " Verily, the first house founded for mankind to worship in is that at Mecca, a blessing and a direction to all believers." Seven other short chapters of the Koran are also woven into this tapestry, namely, the Chapter of the Cave, Miriam, Al Amran, Repentance, T.H., Y.S., and Tabarak.

The final duty of righteous Moslems and the most important ceremony of the Moslem religion is the pilgrimage to Mecca. The pilgrimage (Hajj) to Mecca is not only one of the pillars of the religion of Islam, but it has proved one of the strongest bonds of union and has always exercised a tremendous influence as a missionary agency. Even to-day the pilgrims who return from Mecca to their native villages in Java, India and West Africa are fanatical ambassadors of the greatness and glory of Islam. From an ethical standpoint, the Mecca pilgrimage, with its superstitious and childish ritual, is a blot upon Mohammedan monotheism. But as a great magnet to draw the Moslem world together with an annual and ever-widening esprit de corps, the Mecca pilgrimage is without a rival. . . . For the details of the pilgrimage one must read Burckhardt, Burton, or other of the score of travelers who have risked their lives in visiting the forbidden cities of Islam. The record of their heroism has been compiled in one short volume by Augustus Ralli under the title "Christians at Mecca" (Heinemann, London, 1909). The earliest European pilgrim was Ludovico Bartema who reached Mecca in 1503. The most accurate in his description of the ceremonies of the Hajj is Burckhardt (1814-5), the most fascinating, Burton (1853), and it remained for a Hollander, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, to give us a history of Mecca, a photographic atlas of the city, and a philosophical dissertation on the pilgrimage.1 “It is 1" Het Mekkaansche Feest," Leiden, 1880 and Mekka 2 vols. in German. The latter book is accompanied by a photographic atlas.

possible," says Ralli, "to divide Christian pilgrims to Mecca into three groups. First come those from Bartema to Pitts, inclusive, whom I have already compared to a cloud of light skirmishers. They are followed by the votaries of scienceBadia, Seetzen, Burckhardt, Hurgronje. In a parallel column advance those impelled by love of adventure or curiosity von Maltzan, Bicknell, Keane, Courtellemont. Burton belongs to both the latter groups; Wallin to the first, but he fell on evil days; and it is hard to classify Roches.

"It would tax the ingenuity of most of us to find such another heterogeneous collection of men devoted to one theme. It is a far cry from the humble Pitts to the princely Badia, from the scientific Burckhardt to the poetical Courtellemont, from the impersonal Hurgronje to the autobiographical Roches, from the obscure Wild to the world-famous Burton. Such contrasts might be pursued in the written records that remain; between Burckhardt's orderly accumulation of facts and Keane's rollicking narrative. But suffice it that the members of this select company, differing in time and country, aim and temperament, are united by the single bond of a strange adventure." This strange adventure led them all to observe the pagan rites of the great monotheistic faith of Islam, of which the ceremonies in brief are as follows: After donning the garb of a pilgrim and performing the legal ablutions, the Hajji visits the sacred mosque and kisses the Black Stone. He then runs around the Ka'aba seven times

thrice very rapidly and four times very slowly in imitation of the motions of the planets. Next he offers a prayer: “O Allah, Lord of the Ancient House, free my neck from hell-fire, and preserve me from every evil deed; make me contented with the daily food Thou givest me, and bless me in all Thou hast granted." At "the place of Abraham " he also prays; he drinks water from the sacred well of Zem Zem and again kisses the Black Stone. Then the pilgrim runs