The Anis Al-Hujjaj (Pilgrim's Companion, also transcribed Anis ul-Hujjaj) is a seventeenth-century literary work by Safi ibn Vali, an official of the Mughal court in what is now India. Written in Persian, it describes the Hajj (the pillar of Islam which is the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina) undertaken by him in 1677 AD (AH 1088) and it gives advice to pilgrims. Its illustrations depict pilgrims travelling to the holy sites and taking part in the rituals of the Hajj. [1] They are also a visual guide to significant places and people.
Ibn Vali was an official in the court of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb. [1] His Hajj was financially supported by Zeb-un-Nissa, eldest child of Aurangzeb, after ibn Vali wrote for her a commentary on the Quran. [1] [2] [3] He had also, in 1665, written a universal history. [4] After his Hajj, he returned to his job in the court and continued his scholarship into old age. [4]
Ibn Vali set out from Delhi in September 1676, reaching the port of Mocha, Yemen in January 1677 and continuing with a caravan of other pilgrims. [6] The sea journey from India to the Arabian Peninsula would have taken about 25 days. [7] The book has advice about travelling on ships across the Indian Ocean, starting with advice on choosing a ship. [8] It recommends that each ship should have a tabib (physician) and a blood-letter. [9] Pilgrims are advised to carry their own water in earthen pots, as the water available on ship tasted unpleasant. [10] If they did not have their own water, they could make the ship's water palatable by adding pomegranate syrup or the juice of soured fruit. [11] The book recommends that travellers should stay close to the main mast and away from the outer side of the deck, in order to avoid sea-sickness. [12] It describes in detail the places visited by ibn Vali and the rituals of the Hajj. [8] These included visits to holy places where the pilgrims shaved their hair, made sacrifices, and performed the stoning of the Devil. [1]
There are manuscripts of the Anis in the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage, [13] in the Royal Armoury in Lucknow, [14] and in the Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Vastu Sangrahalaya in Mumbai. [15]
While there are other pilgrims' guides that illustrate the pilgrimage and its locations diagrammatically, the Anis Al-Hujjaj is distinctive for also including colourful depictions of the pilgrims themselves. [1] [5]
The Khalili exemplar (accession number MSS 1025), thought to originate from Gujarat between 1677 and 1680, consists of 23 folios including nine half-page and eleven full-page illustrations. [1] The text is in nastaliq script, with 23 lines per page. [13] The Khalili manuscript includes labelled depictions of places including Surat, Mocha, Jeddah and Mina. [16] The maps of these towns show buildings which are still identifiable today. [16] The illustrations also depict shrines around Mecca, some of which are no longer in existence. These include birthplaces of Muhammad, of his daughter Fatimah, and of his companion Abu Bakr al Siddiq. [16] The convention for maps in the Anis is that the top of the page represents the direction in which pilgrims are travelling. [16]
The illustrations show ships carrying pilgrims from the port of Surat on the Indian subcontinent, crossing the Sea of Oman, and arriving at Jeddah on the Arabian Peninsula. At Jeddah, smaller boats are shown which would have conveyed passengers between the large ships and the port. [17] Another folio of the Khalili manuscript shows a pilgrim caravan, including its amir al-hajj ("commander of the pilgrimage"), named as Abdi Pasha, and ahead of him the mahmal, an empty litter carried on a camel with each pilgrim caravan from Egypt. Sources differ on whether anything was carried within the mahmal, with some sources saying it was kept empty, although in ibn Vali's illustration it contains a Quran on a stand. [8] The illustrations also show the Sharif Barakat, ruler of the sanctuaries, meeting an emissary of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed IV. [1] The pilgrims converging on Mecca included groups from North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Iran, India and the Arabian Desert; the Anis shows their camps. [1] At Muzdalifah, pilgrims are shown collecting pebbles. Then at Mina they throw the pebbles in the ritual of ramy al-jamarāt (stoning of the Devil). [1]
Mecca is the capital of Mecca Province in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and the holiest city in Islam. It is 70 km (43 mi) inland from Jeddah on the Red Sea, in a narrow valley 277 m (909 ft) above sea level. Its last recorded population was 1,578,722 in 2015. Its estimated metropolitan population in 2020 is 2.042 million, making it the third-most populated city in Saudi Arabia after Riyadh and Jeddah. Pilgrims more than triple this number every year during the Ḥajj pilgrimage, observed in the twelfth Hijri month of Dhūl-Ḥijjah.
Kiswa is the cloth that covers the Kaaba in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is draped annually on the 9th day of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah, the day pilgrims leave for the plains of Mount Arafat during the Hajj. A procession traditionally accompanies the kiswa to Mecca, a tradition dating back to the 12th century. The term kiswa has multiple translations, with common ones being 'robe' or 'garment'. Due to the iconic designs and the quality of materials used in creating the kiswa, it is considered one of the most sacred objects in Islamic art, ritual, and worship.
The King's Highway was a trade route of vital importance in the ancient Near East, connecting Africa with Mesopotamia. It ran from Egypt across the Sinai Peninsula to Aqaba, then turned northward across Transjordan, to Damascus and the Euphrates River.
There have been numerous incidents during the Hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to the cities of Mecca and Medina, that have caused loss of life. Every follower of Islam is required to visit Mecca and Medina during the Hajj at least once in his or her lifetime, if able to do so; according to Islam, the pilgrimage is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. During the month of the Hajj, Mecca and Medina must cope with as many as three million pilgrims.
The Ministry of Awqaf of Egypt is one of ministries in the Egyptian government and is in charge of religious endowments. Religious endowments, awqaf, are similar to common law trusts where the trustee is the mosque or individual in charge of the waqf and the beneficiary is usually the community as a whole. Examples of waqfs are of a plot of land, a market, a hospital, or any other building that would aid the community.
The Kaaba, also spelled Ka'ba, Ka'bah or Kabah, sometimes referred to as al-Ka'ba al-Musharrafa, is a stone building at the center of Islam's most important mosque and holiest site, the Masjid al-Haram in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is considered by Muslims to be the Bayt Allah and is the qibla for Muslims around the world. The current structure was built after the original building was damaged by fire during the siege of Mecca by Umayyads in 683.
Hajj is an annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, the holiest city for Muslims. Hajj is a mandatory religious duty for Muslims that must be carried out at least once in their lifetime by all adult Muslims who are physically and financially capable of undertaking the journey, and of supporting their family during their absence from home.
The Maqām Ibrāhīm is a small square stone associated with Ibrahim (Abraham), Ismail (Ishmael) and their building of the Kaaba in what is now the Great Mosque of Mecca in the Hejazi region of Saudi Arabia. According to Islamic tradition, the imprint on the stone came from Abraham's feet.
The Ottoman era in the history of Arabia lasted from 1517 to 1918. The Ottoman degree of control over these lands varied over these four centuries, with the fluctuating strength or weakness of the Empire's central authority.
The hajj is a pilgrimage to Mecca performed by millions of Muslims every year, coming from all over the Muslim world. Its history goes back many centuries. The present pattern of the Islamic Hajj was established by Islamic prophet Muhammad, around 632 CE, who reformed the existing pilgrimage tradition of the pagan Arabs. According to Islamic tradition, the hajj dates from thousands of years earlier, from when Abraham, upon God's command, built the Kaaba. This cubic building is considered the most holy site in Islam and the rituals of the hajj include walking repeatedly around it.
Amir al-hajj was the position and title given to the commander of the annual Hajj pilgrim caravan by successive Muslim empires, from the 7th century until the 20th century. Since the Abbasid period, there were two main caravans, one departing from Damascus and the other from Cairo. Each of the two annual caravans was assigned an amir al-hajj whose main duties were securing funds and provisions for the caravan, and protecting it along the desert route to the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina in the Hejaz.
The 1757 Hajj caravan raid was the plunder and massacre of the Hajj caravan of 1757 on its return to Damascus from Mecca by Bedouin tribesmen. The caravan was under the protection of an Ottoman force led by the Wali of Damascus, Husayn Pasha, and his deputy Musa Pasha, while the Bedouin were led by Qa'dan al-Fayez of the Bani Sakher tribe. An estimated 20,000 pilgrims were either killed or died of hunger or thirst as a result of the raid.
Muḥyi al-Dīn Lārī, died 1521 or 1526–7, was a 16th-century miniaturist and writer, best known for his Kitab Futūḥ al-Ḥaramayn, a guidebook to the Islamic holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
The Khalili Collection of the Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage is a private collection of around 5,000 items relating to the Hajj, the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca which is a religious duty in Islam. It is one of eight collections assembled, conserved, published and exhibited by the British-Iranian scholar, collector and philanthropist Nasser Khalili; each collection is considered among the most important in its field. The collection's 300 textiles include embroidered curtains from the Kaaba, the Station of Abraham, the Mosque of the Prophet Muhammad and other holy sites, as well as textiles that would have formed part of pilgrimage caravans from Egypt or Syria. It also has illuminated manuscripts depicting the practice and folklore of the Hajj as well as photographs, art pieces, and commemorative objects relating to the Hajj and the holy sites of Mecca and Medina.
A mahmal is a ceremonial passenger-less litter that was carried on a camel among caravans of pilgrims on the Hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca which is a sacred duty in Islam. It symbolised the political power of the sultans who sent it, demonstrating their custody of Islam's holy sites. Each mahmal had an intricately embroidered textile cover, or sitr. The tradition dates back at least to the 13th century and ended in the mid-20th. There are many descriptions and photographs of mahmals from 19th century observers of the Hajj.
A sitara or sitarah is an ornamental curtain used in the sacred sites of Islam. A sitara forms part of the kiswah, the cloth covering of the Kaaba in Mecca. Another sitara adorns the Prophet's Tomb in the Al-Masjid an-Nabawi mosque in Medina. These textiles bear embroidered inscriptions of verses from the Quran and other significant texts. Sitaras have been created annually since the 16th century as part of a set of textiles sent to Mecca. The tradition is that the textiles are provided by the ruler responsible for the holy sites. In different eras, this has meant the Mamluk Sultans, the Sultans of the Ottoman Empire, and presently the rulers of Saudi Arabia. The construction of the sitaras is both an act of religious devotion and a demonstration of the wealth of the rulers who commission them.
Futuh al-Haramayn is considered the first Islamic guidebook for pilgrimage. It was written by Muhi al-Din Lari and completed in India in 1505–6. The book was dedicated to Muzaffar ibn Mahmudshah, the ruler of Gujarat. No early illustrated Indian copies are known, but later in the 16th century it was widely copied in Ottoman Turkey. The book describes the full rituals of the Hajj in order, and describes the religious sites one can visit.
Muhammad Sadiq Bey was an Ottoman Egyptian army engineer and surveyor who served as treasurer of the Hajj pilgrim caravan. As a photographer and author, he documented the holy sites of Islam at Mecca and Medina, taking the first ever photographs in what is now Saudi Arabia.
The Dar al-Kiswa al-Sharifa, abbreviated Dar al-Kiswa, was an artistic workshop in Cairo, Egypt, which operated from 1817 to 1997. For more than a century, it made sacred textiles for the Islamic holy sites in Mecca and Medina including the kiswah, the ornamental textile covering of the Kaaba which is replaced annually. The kiswah and other sacred textiles were conveyed each year across the hundreds of miles of desert from Cairo to Mecca on camels among the Hajj pilgrims. The workshop also made textiles for royal and state purposes, including military and police uniforms. At its peak at the start of the 20th century, the workshop employed over a hundred craftsmen to make textiles for the holy sites. Egypt sent the kiswah every year with few exceptions until 1962, when the kiswah sent to Mecca was returned unused. From then on, the textiles were made in a dedicated factory in Mecca. The building is now a government storage space.
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam was an exhibition held at the British Museum in London from 26 January to 15 April 2012. It was the world's first major exhibition telling the story, visually and textually, of the hajj – the pilgrimage to Mecca which is one of the five pillars of Islam. Textiles, manuscripts, historical documents, photographs, and art works from many different countries and eras were displayed to illustrate the themes of travel to Mecca, hajj rituals, and the Kaaba. More than two hundred objects were included, drawn from forty public and private collections in a total of fourteen countries. The largest contributor was David Khalili's family trust, which lent many objects that would later be part of the Khalili Collection of Hajj and the Arts of Pilgrimage.