Another Islamic duty worth attention here is of a very
different kind.
Pilgrimages are commonplace in the world's religions. The adherents of
a given faith will usually regard some places as more sacred than
others. The reasons for this may vary; thus the place may have some
cosmic significance, or have been the scene of an important event in
the life of the founder, or be the tomb of a revered saint. What
believers do about such places may also vary: they may travel to them
to join in crowded communal rituals, or visit them as individuals, or
even make a point of avoiding them. This kind of thing is as widespread
in Islam as in other world religions. What, then, is different about
Islamic pilgrimage?
Of the many forms of pilgrimage in the Islamic world,
one stands out:
the pilgrimage to Mecca (hajj). There are several reasons why Mecca is
a more significant place in Islamic terms than the average Arabian
oasis, but the most fundamental is the one we have already encountered,
the presence of God's house. In some religions gods have multiple
residences, but in the Islamic case God's house is unique. Here, then,
is a sacred place that has priority for all Muslims, just as Jerusalem
does for all Jews. By contrast, it is not at all clear what single
place would enjoy such a status for adherents of either of the other
world religions, be they Christians or Buddhists. Moreover, going on
pilgrimage to Mecca is not just an act of piety. It is an obligation of
the individual believer laid down in the Koran: "It is the duty of
people towards God to make the pilgrimage to the House, if he [the
believer] is able to make his way there" (Koran 3:97).
Again, the scholars went to work to produce a full
legal account of the
duty. A Muslim is obliged to perform the pilgrimage once in a lifetime
(though there is nothing wrong with doing it repeatedly). Certain
categories of people are exempt, such as slaves, lunatics, or
unaccompanied women. Insecurity on the roads and lack of means excuse
those who would otherwise be obligated (the Koran says "if he is
able"). The scholars also spelled out the traditional rituals that the
pilgrims must perform when they gather in the neighborhood of Mecca in
the second week of the last month of the Muslim year. The net effect of
all this was to confer on the pilgrimage to Mecca the status of a
fundamental institution of Islam.
This meant that in Islam, to a far greater extent than
in Christianity
or Buddhism, there was a place and a time each year at which believers
from the most diverse components of the Islamic community were gathered
together. The Muslim world, like any other of its day, was one in which
most people lived their lives within very narrow horizons. News
traveled slowly across landscapes that were politically, ethnically,
and culturally fragmented. In such a world the pilgrimage played an
unusual role in creating a broader consciousness of the geographical
range of Islam, and in making possible the maintenance of regular
contact between widely separated Muslim populations. Mecca was
admittedly far from perfect in this respect. At the best of times it
was a difficult place to get topilgrims came at the risk of being
robbed by the nomads in the desert or shipwrecked in the Red Sea. And
when the pilgrimage fell in high summer, Mecca was a grim place for the
pilgrims to be wandering around in the open. But as a way of keeping a
civilization in touch with itself, it was peerless in premodern times.