Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
ReligionIslamic
Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah & Meccah — Volume 1
Burton, Richard Francis, Sir
Arabian Peninsula -- Description and travel
The "Garden" is the most elaborate part of the Mosque. Little can be
said in its praise by day, when it bears the same relation to a
second-rate church in Rome as an English chapel-of-ease to Westminster
Abbey. It is a space of about eighty feet in length, tawdrily decorated
so as to resemble a garden. The carpets are flowered, and the pediments
of the columns are cased with bright green tiles, and adorned to the
height of a man with gaudy and unnatural vegetation in arabesque. It is
disfigured by handsome branched candelabras of cut crystal, the work, I
believe, of a London house, and presented to the shrine by the late
Abbas Pasha of Egypt.[FN#24]
The only admirable feature of the view is the light
[p.313] cast by the windows of stained glass[FN#25] in the Southern
wall. Its peculiar background, the railing of the tomb, a splendid
filigree-work of green and polished brass, gilt or made to resemble
gold, looks more picturesque near than at a distance, when it suggests
the idea of a gigantic bird-cage. But at night the eye, dazzled by
oil-lamps[FN#26] suspended from the roof, by huge wax candles, and by
smaller illuminations falling upon crowds of visitors in handsome
attire, with the richest and the noblest of the city sitting in
congregation when service is performed,[FN#27] becomes less critical.
Still the scene must be viewed with Moslem bias, and until a man is
thoroughly imbued with the spirit of the East, the last place the
Rauzah will remind him of, is that which the architect primarily
intended it to resemble-a garden.
Then with Hamid, professionally solemn, I reassumed the position of
prayer, and retraced my steps. After passing through another small door
in the dwarf wall that bounds the Muwajihah, we did not turn to the
right, which would have led us to the Bab al-Salam; our course was in
an opposite direction, towards the Eastern wall of the temple.
Meanwhile we repeated, "Verily Allah and His Angels[FN#28] bless the
Apostle! O ye who believe, bless him,
[p.314] and salute Him with Honour!" At the end of this prayer, we
arrived at the Mausoleum, which requires some description before the
reader can understand the nature of our proceedings there.
The Hujrah[FN#29] or "Chamber" as it is called, from the circumstance
of its having been Ayishah's room, is an irregular square of from fifty
to fifty-five feet in the South-East corner of the building, and
separated on all sides from the walls of the Mosque by a passage about
twenty-six feet broad on the South side, and twenty on the East. The
reason of this isolation has been before explained, and there is a
saying of Mohammed's, "O Allah, cause not my Tomb to become an Object
of Idolatrous Adoration! May Allah's Wrath fall heavy upon the People
who make the Tombs of their Prophets Places of Prayer[FN#30]!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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