I have purposely made use of Burckhardt’s own words in describing the Black Stone, and several other objects of curiosity, that the reader may see the exact impressions which they made on the mind of the traveller; though, as his style is very diffuse, it would frequently not have been difficult to compress his meaning into a much smaller compass. I cannot, however, pursue the same course with his description of the Hadj; which, notwithstanding its interest, is far too voluminous for the space which I can bestow upon it. On the 21st of November, 1814, the approach of the Syrian caravan was announced by a messenger, whose horse dropped down dead the moment he dismounted. Several other persons followed in about two hours after; and during the night, the main body, with the Pasha of Damascus at its head, came up, and encamped in the plain of Sheïkh Mahmoud. Next morning the Egyptian caravan likewise arrived; and at the same time Mohammed Aly, who desired to be present at the Hadj, appeared unexpectedly at Mecca, dressed in an ihram composed of two magnificent shawls of Kashmeer. All the hajjîs residing in the city now assumed the ihram, with the usual ceremonies, attheir own lodgings, preparatory to their setting out for Arafat, and at noon heard a short sermon in the mosque.
The city was now full of movement and activity: all the pilgrims were preparing to set out for Arafat, some running hither and thither in search of lodgings, others visiting the markets, or the Kaaba. Many Meccawys, engaged in petty traffic, were hastening to establish themselves on the mountain, for the accommodation of the pilgrims. Camel-drivers led their beasts through the streets, offering them to the pilgrims for hire. On the 24th of November, the Syrian caravan, with the Mahmal, or sacred camel, in front, passed in procession through the city. The majority of the pilgrims rode in a species of palanquin, placed upon their camels; but the Pasha of Damascus, and other grandees, were mounted in tackhtravans, or splendid litters, which were borne by two camels. The heads of these picturesque animals were decorated with feathers, tassels, and bells. Crowds of people of all classes lined the streets, and greeted the pilgrims as they passed with loud acclamations and praise. The martial music of the pasha, twelve finely-caparisoned horses led in front of his tackhtravan, and the rich litters in which his women rode, particularly attracted attention. The Egyptian caravan followed soon after, and, consisting entirely of military pilgrims in the splendid Turkish costume, was no less admired than its predecessor. Both continued, without stopping, their march to Arafat, and were almost immediately followed by the other pilgrims in the city, and by far the greater proportion of the population of Mecca and Jidda, among whom our traveller likewise proceeded to the sacred hill.
Burckhardt reached the camp about three hours after sunset. The pilgrims were still wandering about the plain, and among the tents, in search of their companions, or of their resting-place, andmany did not arrive until midnight. Numberless fires glimmered upon the dark plain to the extent of several miles; and high and brilliant clusters of lamps marked the different places of encampment of Mohammed Aly, Soleyman Pasha, and the Emir el Hadj of the Egyptian caravan. Few slept: “the devotees set up praying, and their loud chants were particularly distinguished on the side of the Syrian encampment. The merry Meccawys formed themselves into parties, singing jovial songs, accompanied by clapping of hands; and the coffee-houses scattered over the plain were crowded all night with customers. The night was dark and cold. I had formed a resting-place for myself by means of a large carpet tied to the back of a Meccawy’s tent; and having walked about for the greater part of the night, I had just disposed myself to sleep, when two guns, fired by the Syrian and Egyptian Hadj, announced the approaching dawn of the day of pilgrimage, and summoned the faithful to prepare for their morning prayers.”
The scene which, on the unfolding of the dawn, presented itself to the eye of the traveller, was one of the most extraordinary upon earth. “Every pilgrim issued from his tent to walk over the plains, and take a view of the busy crowds assembled there. Long streets of tents, fitted up as bazaars, furnished all kinds of provisions. The Syrian and Egyptian cavalry were exercised by their chiefs early in the morning, while thousands of camels were seen feeding upon the dry shrubs of the plain all round the camp.” Burckhardt now ascended the summit of Arafat, whence he could enjoy a distant view of the whole, the mountain being an isolated mass of granite, and reaching the height of two hundred feet above the level of the plain. From this point he counted about three thousand tents, but the far greater number were, like himself, without tents. Twenty or twenty-five thousand camels were dispersed,in separate groups, over the plain; and the number of pilgrims of both sexes, and of all classes, could not amount to less than seventy thousand. “The Syrian Hadj was encamped on the south and south-west side of the mountain; the Egyptian on the south-east. Around the house of the Sherif, Yahya himself was encamped with his Bedouin troops, and in its neighbourhood were all the Hejaz people. Mohammed Aly, and Soleyman, Pasha of Damascus, as well as several of their officers, had very handsome tents; but the most magnificent of all was that of the wife of Mohammed Aly, the mother of Tousoun Pasha and Ibrahim Pasha, who had lately arrived at Cairo for the Hadj, with a truly royal equipage, five hundred camels being necessary to transport her baggage from Jidda to Mecca. Her tent was in fact an encampment, consisting of a dozen tents of different sizes, inhabited by her women; the whole enclosed by a wall of linen cloth, eight hundred paces in circuit, the single entrance to which was guarded by eunuchs in splendid dresses. Around this enclosure were pitched the tents of the men who formed her numerous suite. The beautiful embroidery on the exterior of this linen palace, with the various colours displayed in every part of it, constituted an object which reminded me of some descriptions in the Arabian Tales of the Thousand and One Nights.”
Among the prodigious crowd were persons from every corner of the Mohammedan world. Burckhardt counted forty different languages, and did not doubt that there were many more. About three o’clock in the afternoon, the pilgrims, quitting their tents, which were immediately struck, and mounting their camels, pressed forward towards Mount Arafat, and covered its sides from top to bottom. The preacher now took his stand upon the platform on the mountain, and began to address the multitude. The hearing of the sermon, which lasts till sunset,constitutes the holy ceremony of the Hadj, and without being present at it, and at least appearing to hear, no pilgrim is entitled to the name of hajjî. “The two pashas, with their whole cavalry drawn up in two squadrons behind them, took their post in the rear of the deep line of camels of the hajjîs, to which those of the people of the Hejaz were also joined: and here they waited in solemn and respectful silence the conclusion of the sermon. Farther removed from the preacher was the Sherif Yahya, with his small body of soldiers, distinguished by several green standards carried before him. The two Mahmals, or holy camels, which carry on their backs the high structure that serves as the banner of their respective caravans, made way with difficulty through the ranks of camels that encircled the southern and eastern sides of the hill, opposite to the preacher, and took their station, surrounded by their guards, directly under the platform in front of him. The preacher, or khatyb, who is usually the Kadhy of Mecca, was mounted upon a finely-caparisoned camel, which had been led up the steps; it being traditionally said that Mohammed was always seated when he addressed his followers, a practice in which he was imitated by all the califs who came to the Hadj, and who from hence addressed their subjects in person. The Turkish gentleman of Constantinople, however, unused to camel-riding, could not keep his seat so well as the hardy Bedouin prophet; and the camel becoming unruly, he was soon obliged to alight from it. He read his sermon from a book in Arabic, which he held in his hands. At intervals of every four or five minutes he paused, and stretched forth his arms to implore blessings from above; while the assembled multitudes around and before him waved the skirts of their ihrams over their heads, and rent the air with shouts ofLebeyk, Allah, huma Lebeyk!—“Here we are at thy bidding, O God!” During the wavings of the ihrams,the side of the mountain, thickly crowded as it was by the people in their white garments, had the appearance of a cataract of water; while the green umbrellas, with which several thousand hajjîs, sitting on their camels below, were provided, bore some resemblance to a verdant plain.”
Burckhardt was present at all the remaining ceremonies of the Hadj, which I shall not now pause to describe; and after observing whatever was worthy of examination both at Mecca and Jidda, he joined a small caravan of pilgrims who were going to visit the tomb of the prophet, and set out for Medina on the 15th of January, 1815. During this journey he imprudently advanced before the caravan, and was attacked by five Bedouins, from whom he was quickly delivered, however, by the approach of his companions. They reached Medina on the 28th of January. The ceremonies practised in this city were much less tedious than at Mecca, and did not occupy our traveller more than a quarter of an hour. Here, shortly after his arrival, he was attacked by an intermittent fever, accompanied by extraordinary despondency. His condition, indeed, was well calculated to inspire gloomy thoughts; for he had no society, and but one book, which was, however, as he observes, worth a whole shelf full of others. This was a pocket edition of Milton, which he had borrowed from an English ship at Jidda.
Medina, it is well known, is chiefly indebted to the tomb of Mohammed for its celebrity. This mausoleum, which stands on the south-eastern corner of the principal mosque, is protected from the too near approach of visiters by an iron railing, painted green, about two-thirds the height of the pillars of the colonnade which runs round the interior of the mosque. “The railing is of good workmanship, in imitation of filligree, and is interwoven with open-worked inscriptions of yellow bronze, supposed by the vulgar to be of gold, and of so close a texture,that no view can be obtained of the interior except by several small windows about six inches square, which are placed in the four sides of the railing, about five feet above the ground.” On the south side, where are the two principal windows, before which the devout stand when praying, the railing is plated with silver, and the common inscription—“There is no God but God, the Evident Truth”—is wrought in silver letters round the windows. The tomb itself, as well as that of Abu Bekr and Omar, which stand close to it, is concealed from the public gaze by a curtain of rich silk brocade of various colours, interwoven with silver flowers and arabesques, with inscriptions in characters of gold running across the midst of it, like that of the covering of the Kaaba. Behind this curtain, which, according to the historian of the city, was formerly changed every six years, and is now renewed by the Porte whenever the old one is decayed, or when a new sultan ascends the throne, none but the chief eunuchs, the attendants of the mosque, are permitted to enter. This holy sanctuary once served, as the temple of Delphi did among the Greeks, as the public treasury of the nation. Here the money, jewels, and other precious articles of the people of the Hejaz were kept in chests, or suspended on silken ropes. Among these was a copy of the Koran in Kufic characters; a brilliant star set in diamonds and pearls, which was suspended directly over the prophet’s tomb; with all sorts of vessels set with jewels, earrings, bracelets, necklaces, and other ornaments, sent as presents from all parts of the empire. Most of these articles were carried away by the Wahabees when they sacked and plundered the sacred cities.
On the 21st of April, 1815, Burckhardt quitted Medina with a small caravan bound for Yembo, on the seacoast. His mind was still exceedingly depressed by the weak state of his body; and his gayety and animal spirits, with the energy which accompaniesthem in ardent minds, having deserted him, the world assumed in his eyes a sombre aspect, which rendered travelling and every other pleasure insipid. All he now sighed for was rest. This mental condition seems strongly to have affected even his opinions. His views both of men and things became cynical. Vice seemed to have spread like a deluge over the eastern world, leaving no single spot whereon Virtue might rest the sole of her foot. “For my own part,” says he, “a long residenceamong Turks, Syrians, and Egyptiansjustifies me in declaring that they are wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice; that they havelittle true piety, andstill less charity or forbearance; and thathonestyis only to be found in theirpaupers or idiots.” His mind was certainly labouring under the effects of his Medina fever when he wrote this passage, and it would therefore be lost labour to analyze or confute it minutely. That people who are “wholly deficient in virtue, honour, and justice” should be destitute of honesty, is no more to be wondered at than that a black camel should not be half-white; but if “true piety” be, as most moralists will admit, to be numbered among the virtues, then the orientals are not, as Mr. Burckhardt asserts, “whollydeficient in virtue,” &c., since he allows that they have some, though but little, “true piety.” Again, either the majority of the orientals are rich, or the majority of them are honest; for if the majority of them are poor, or paupers, then the majority of them are honest; for honesty, we are told, is only to be found among paupers and idiots. It would be easy to expose and refute our traveller’s assertion by the direct testimony of persons still more competent than he to decide on such points; but his opinion is palpably absurd, like most others formed by sick or gloomy individuals, since no society could subsist if formed entirely of vicious members. Had Burckhardt himself lived to see his works through the press, such passages as the abovewould, I am persuaded, have been expunged or modified; for he was much too judicious deliberately to have hazarded so monstrous an assertion.
Upon his arrival at Yembo, dejected and melancholy, to add to his despondency, he found the plague raging in the city. The air, night and day, was filled with the piercing cries of those who had been bereaved of the objects of their affection; yet, as no vessel was ready to sail for Egypt, he was constrained to remain during eighteen days in the midst of the dying and the dead, continually exposed to infection through the heedlessness and the imprudence of his slave. At length, however, he procured a passage in an open boat bound for Cosseir, many of the passengers in which were sick of a disease which appeared to be the plague, though only two of them died. After remaining twenty days on board, he was, at his own request, put on shore in the harbour of Sherin, at the entrance of the Gulf of Akaba, where he agreed with some Bedouins to transport him and his slave to Tor and Suez. Learning on the way, however, that the plague was at Suez, he remained at a village in the vicinity of the former place, where the enjoyment of tranquillity and a bracing mountain air soon restored his strength, and enabled him, though still convalescent, to pursue his journey to Cairo, where he arrived on the 24th of June, after an absence of nearly two years and a half. As his health was not yet completely recovered, he undertook a journey into Lower Egypt during the following winter, which, as he seems to have believed, restored his constitution to its former tone.
His time was now entirely occupied in writing the journal of his Nubian and Arabian travels, and in the necessary care of his health, which, notwithstanding his sanguine expectation to the contrary, was still in a somewhat equivocal state. In the spring of 1816 the plague again broke out at Cairo,and our traveller, to avoid the infection, undertook a journey to Mount Sinai, intending to remain, until the pestilence should be over, among the Bedouins, who are never visited by this scourge. During this excursion he traced the course of the eastern branch of the Red Sea to within sight of Akaba, the ancient Ælanas, which he was prevented by circumstances from visiting. On his return to Cairo, he united with Mr. Salt in furnishing Belzoni with money for transporting the head of Memnon from Gournou to Alexandria. The scheme, it would seem, originated with Burckhardt and Salt, to whom, therefore, we are chiefly indebted for the possession of that extraordinary specimen of ancient art.
On the 4th of October, 1817, Burckhardt, who had so long waited in vain for an opportunity of penetrating with a Moggrebin caravan into Africa, was attacked with violent dysentery. The best medical advice which an eminent English physician (Doctor Richardson), then at Cairo, could afford was found unavailing. The disease prevailed, and on the 15th of the same month our able, adventurous, and lamented traveller breathed his last. As he had lived while in the East as a Mussulman, the Turks, he foresaw, would claim his body, “and perhaps,” said he to Mr. Salt, who was present at his death-bed, “you had better let them.”—“The funeral, as he desired,” says this gentleman, “was Mohammedan, conducted with all proper regard to the respectable rank which he had held in the eyes of the natives.” This was honourable to his Cairo friends; and to those who are interested in the history of his manly career it is gratifying to discover how highly he was valued. I have closed the lives of few travellers with more regret. It would have given me extreme pleasure to have followed him through those undiscovered regions whither his ardent imagination so anxiously tended; and, instead of thus recording his untimely death, to have beheld him enjoying in thefirst capital of the world the reward of his courage and enterprise. That I cannot enter into all Mr. Burckhardt’s views, either of men or things, is no reason why I should not be sensible of his extraordinary merit. His character, upon the whole, admirably fitted him to be a great traveller. He was bold, patient, persevering, judicious. He penetrated with admirable tact into the designs of his enemies, and not only knew how to prevent them, but, what was more difficult, to turn them to the confusion of their inventors. Upon this very excellence, however, was based one of his principal defects; he interpreted men in too refined and systematical a manner, and often saw in their actions more contrivance than ever existed. He was too hasty, moreover, in believing evil of mankind, which, with too many other able speculators, he supposed to be the necessary consequence of a philosophical spirit. But he was a young man. His mind, had he lived, would unquestionably have purified itself from this stain, as truth, which he possessed the courage and the ability to search for with success, was his only object. The works which he has left behind him, exceedingly numerous considering his brief career, are an imperishable monument of his genius and enterprise, and, when the fate of the writer is reflected on, can never be read without a feeling of deep interest almost amounting to emotion. Fortunately for his fame, their publication has been superintended by editors every way qualified for the task, who, without in the least dissipating their originality, must in very many instances have infinitely improved their style and arrangement. A popular edition of the whole would at once be a benefit to the public and an additional honour to the memory of Burckhardt.