The perpetual pilgrimage (1/2): Mecca, centre of the world
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‘Be in this world like a stranger or a traveller passing on his way!’ This saying of the Prophet Muhammad sets the tone of the detachment that must animate the Muslim believer; beyond that, it makes of life a permanent pilgrimage, an endless journey. The pilgrimage (hajj), an Abrahamic rite according to Islam, consecrates on the ritual plane this necessity of movement, since it is its fifth pillar.
From Adam to Muhammad
Islam presents itself as recapitulating and synthesising the earlier revelations. Among the hundred and twenty-four thousand prophets that God raised up for our humanity, Adam, Moses, Abraham and Jesus hold a great place in the Islamic perspective. As far as the pilgrimage to Mecca is concerned, its doctrine and its rites are the fruit of three stages, linked to three prophets: Adam, Abraham and Muhammad. Muslim legends affirm that Adam, driven out of paradise, first fell in India, then made his way to Arabia. Eve, for her part, found herself at Jedda; the name of that city is said to come from the Arabic jadda, ‘the ancestress’, that is, Eve. The two of them are said to have known each other again, or recognised each other (ta’arafa in Arabic), on one of the essential sites of the pilgrimage: the plain of ’Arafa, precisely. Mecca (Makka in Arabic) then bore the primordial name of Bakka, as the Qur’an bears witness: ‘The first temple founded for men is, truly, that of Bakka. It is blessed and serves as a direction for the worlds’ (III, 96).
To soothe Adam’s sadness after his fall, tradition says, God sent him from paradise a tent of ruby, together with the Stone, which was then a diamond dazzling with light. Adam established the celestial rite of circumambulation around the Stone, which gradually turned black owing to men’s idolatry. Still enshrined in one of the corners of the Ka’ba (literally ‘the cube’), this Black Stone is a tangible sign of the covenant established between God and humanity. After Adam’s death, the celestial tent was raised up to heaven. His sons built a house on the site of the tent, but the flood submerged that house and men forgot its location.
According to the Qur’an, God Himself showed Abraham this site (XXII, 26). In the holy Book, the father of monotheism plays a decisive role in the consecration of the temple of Mecca to the worship of divine unity. It was he who, with the help of his son Ishmael, is said to have built the Ka’ba in its present state (Qur’an II, 125-127) and to have established the annual pilgrimage. It fell to Muhammad to restore the Adamic and Abrahamic monotheism, notably by revivifying the meaning and the rites of the pilgrimage: it was observed before the appearance of Islam, but most of the Arabs of the time, having become idolaters, had lost the awareness of divine unity. Abraham is still present in the pilgrimage, since the believer, after accomplishing his rounds around the Ka’ba, performs a prayer at the Maqam Ibrahim, or Station of Abraham. A rock there preserves the patriarch’s footprints and thus marks the limit of the human state.
As for the feminine aspect of the divine Principle, it is illustrated by Abraham’s wife, Hagar. She, abandoned in the midst of the desert by her husband on divine order, was seeking a spring to quench her son Ishmael’s thirst. She ran seven times the distance separating the two hillocks of Safa and Marwa, from the top of which she scanned the horizon. Thereupon the well of Zamzam gushed forth, situated at the heart of the Meccan sanctuary, which still today quenches the pilgrims’ thirst. They actualise Hagar’s quest by accomplishing a sevenfold course between the two hills (al-sa’y).
The axis of the world
For Muslims, Mecca is the centre of the world. Identified with the ‘navel of the earth’ (surrat al-ard), Mecca has the Qur’anic name Umm al-qura, that is, ‘the Mother of cities’, the primordial city from which all the cities of the world originate. As for the Ka’ba, which stands objectively at the centre of Mecca, it is situated on the axis of the world. It represents only the terrestrial substitute of the celestial Ka’bas, and above all of the divine Throne that dominates and encompasses all these sanctuaries at once. The celestial Ka’bas symbolise the multiple states of being produced by axial universal manifestation. Likewise, the ritual rounds (tawaf) of the pilgrims around the Ka’ba merely reproduce the rounds that the angels accomplish unceasingly around the Throne. One of the most impressive sights offered in the sanctuary of Mecca is this incessant circular movement of the pilgrims around the Ka’ba: it goes on day and night, since circumambulation is also part of the lesser pilgrimage (’umra), which, unlike the hajj, can be performed throughout the year.
One does not gain access to the centre of the world without breaking with profane life. The state of sacralisation (ihram) cuts the pilgrim off from his ordinary condition to restore him to harmony with that of the primordial state, materialised by the sacred territory (haram) surrounding Mecca. Entry into the state of ihram takes place at one of the precise points situated on the perimeter of that territory, according to geographical origin. To this end, the pilgrim purifies himself by a complete ablution and dons a particular garment, seamless and white. From the moment the pilgrim has formulated his intention (niyya), he abstains from certain acts, such as sexual relations or the cutting of hair and nails.
During the ritual prayers that unfold all around the Ka’ba, especially during the pilgrimage where the human density is extremely great, one feels the flux of the prayers of all Muslims throughout the world converging, unceasingly, upon Mecca: because of the time differences, the five daily prayers become a multitude. One then perceives the unity of the Muslim community and, beyond it, of the human community.
Since the pilgrims come from every region of the world and then return to them, something of the centre is thus disseminated to the periphery. Through this action repeated every year, the whole of the Muslim community finds itself purified. A saying of the Prophet Muhammad illustrates this concentric diffusion of the baraka of the pilgrimage: ‘No pilgrim, he said, pronounces the talbiya, the answer to the divine call, without the stones, the trees and the clods of earth to his right and to his left also pronouncing the consecrated formula to the ends of the earth.’ Every place on earth is indeed attached immediately to the Meccan centre: it is in this sense that Muhammad said, ‘God has favoured my community by giving it the surface of the entire earth as its sanctuary.’
Eric Geoffroy, published with the kind permission of the journal ‘Parfaire l’homme’. Continued in: The perpetual pilgrimage (2/2).
