Everyman’s Mecca

Again, from the 19th century onwards, there was a revival of the practice of pilgrimage to the Holy Land from Europe and the US. While this history of Western pilgrimage has been widely studied, the parallel history of Haj pilgrimages is only now being excavated and examined in English. In this context, the book under review—the first English translation of Amir Ahmad Alawi’s Journey to the Holy Land, and the excellent introduction by translators Mushirul Hasan and Rakhshanda Jalil—is a major contribution to a burgeoning branch of study.

All religions have pilgrimages. They are major socio-economic institutions, both sharing in mainstream economy and formulating its limits. This is perhaps best illustrated by a Southeast Asian saying, quoted in the Introduction: “If one of them had silver, he would buy gold, but if he prospered further, he would go to Mecca”.

The tradition of the Haj has been sustained, with variations, right from the genesis of Islam to the present day: historically speaking, traditions of a pilgrimage to Mecca predate Islam. But if in pre-Islamic times these involved some Arab tribes, today the Haj involves people from all the continents. Part of the success of the Haj as pilgrimage lies not just in its codification as one of the pillars of faith for a Muslim, but also in its simplicity and malleability: all able-bodied Muslims are supposed to perform the Haj, if they can afford it and if their health and responsibilities permit, and the act of worship is quite simple and highly egalitarian, at least in theory.

It is easy to see the Haj as enabling a pan-Islamic ethos: the aspiration to reach the same space, the tribulations of travel, the commonalities of theological preaching, the experience of the worship, and the return home with the prestige of being a Hajji. All these are matters that, it seems, enable a kind of network of opinions to be disseminated across the ‘Muslim world’. But the experience of Haj was also fragmented by differences within and across Muslim societies. Turks versus Arabs, Shia versus Sunni, Iraq versus Iran—there is a long history of conflict over the Haj and related matters. Even at the personal level, one finds interesting fractures in the Hajnamas: like the 19th century Indian noblewoman who complains of the loose morals of Arab women, as the latter often divorced and remarried. Alawi’s account contains similar negotiations with public and private matters, as he is torn between norms of Muslim ‘decency’ and his modern aspirations.

Haj pilgrimages contain both religious and secular elements, as demonstrated by Alawi’s depiction of the perils of travel, political issues etc. Historically speaking, some of the great Muslim travel narratives started off as Haj pilgrimages: Ibn Battuta set out on his famous travels in the 14th century with an initial Haj, as did Ibn Jubair, author of a major travel text, in the 12th century. Alawi’s account of his journey in 1929 seldom reaches the stature of such writing, but remains an interesting text, beautifully contextualised in the introduction.

The need to recover texts like this one and excavate the history of Haj pilgrimages—as well as Buddhist and Hindu ones—arises from a bid to challenge the dominant narratives of the formation of our world, which is seen as having been enabled primarily by the bridge of European colonisation. Postcolonialism makes the ‘empire’ write back, but at the same time reinforces the bridge of European centrality. However, the world contains other bridges too: that of Budhist pilgrimage, for instance, that brought the Chinese to India at least from the fourth century, or that of the Haj. Such transactions were not contingent on the European link. To trace them is to enable a fuller narration of the connections between peoples and cultures.