By Spahic Omer
(Contents: An interplay of scholarship, individualism and imperialism; Burton’s bigotry; Madinah as a soft target; The Prophet’s mosque; Burton on the Prophet’s mosque; Madinah’s domestic life and residential architecture; Conclusion)
Richard Francis Burton (1821-1890) was a British explorer, writer, geographer, translator, soldier, diplomat, cartographer and spy. He lived and worked in a post-Napoleonic era which impacted the very essence of European and global affairs. Coincidently, the year Napoleon died (5.5.1821), Burton was born (19.3.1821). The new era produced what Edward Said called “modern Orientalism”, making the discipline of Orientalism more systematic and more scholarly an enterprise.
Such were the personality and character of Burton that he, in a way, epitomised the new Orientalist proclivity, exuberance and scale, leaving an undeletable mark on the discipline and even on his age. He was a personification of the “perfect Orientalism man” (scholar, explorer and agent). He authored over 40 books and countless articles. His best-known achievements include the book “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah” and an unexpurgated translation of “One Thousand and One Nights” (Arabian Nights) as a collection of Middle Eastern and south Asian anecdotes and legends.
In his book on the pilgrimage (hajj) to the holiest sites of Islam, Burton – pretending to be a Muslim and disguised as a Persian mirza (chief and nobleman) and a Sunni shaykh, doctor, magician and sufi (darwish) – described characters, customs, behavioural patterns and physical surroundings. The book is “a treasury of material on Arab life, beliefs, manners and morals; detailed descriptions of religious ceremonies, mosques, temples, etc.; and a variety of ethnographic, economic, and geographical information. Whether telling of the crowded caravan to Mecca, engaging in minute analysis of Bedouin character, waxing lyrical about a desert landscape, or reporting conversations with townsfolk or fellow pilgrims, Burton gives us a vivid picture of the region and its people.”
Burton was in Makkah and Madinah for hajj in 1853. He arrived from Cairo. He firstly visited Madinah from the 25th July to the 31st August 1853, whence he proceeded to Makkah for the hajj ceremonies. After hajj, he went to Jeddah from where he returned to Cairo.
The focus of this article is Burton’s observations concerning the city of Madinah only. His stay in Makkah is omitted because, due to the comprehensive works of Joseph Pitts (d. 1735), Ali Bey el Abbassi (d. 1818) and John Lewis Burckhardt (d. 1817), who preceded Burton, not much original did he contribute in connection with describing the hajj rites, the city of Makkah, its holy mosque (al-masjid al-haram) and its other holy sites. At the same time, however, those three travellers’ relationships with and portrayals of Madinah, for different reasons, were seriously hindered. Joseph Pitts was a slave; Ali Bey el Abbassi was prevented by the Wahhabis from even approaching Madinah; and Burckhardt was prostrated by sickness throughout the period of his stay in Madinah and so, was incapacitated to do most of what he was supposed to do.
An interplay of scholarship, individualism and imperialism
Burton was a versatile and very resourceful personality. He was a bit of everything. It is hard to pinpoint a vocation, or a talent, and show that he excelled in it more than in others. Simply put, he was matchlessly himself, Richard Francis Burton, a unique hero who was known to his countrymen by his works, not by his careers and titles. According to his wife, Isabel, “during the last 48 years of his life, he lived only for the benefit and for the welfare of England and of his countrymen, and of the human race at large.”
At the same time, Burton was a person full of contrasts, a maverick. His eccentric and determined personality always coveted to be the best and on top. What was dangerous and impossible for others was normal and inviting for him, and what was normal for others was mundane and undeserving for him. He did not hesitate to fly into the face of danger to prove a point either to himself or to others. He was a perfectionist.
When his application for three years’ leave of absence on special duty from India to Maskat “for the purpose of removing that opprobrium to modern adventure, the huge white blot which in our maps still notes the eastern and the central regions of Arabia” was rejected on the grounds that “the contemplated journey was of too dangerous a nature”, Burton’s true self was stirred and he was left with little choice. “What remained for me but to prove, by trial, that what might be perilous to other travellers was safe to me? The ‘experimentum crucis’ (crucial experiment) was a visit to al-Hijaz, at once the most difficult and the most dangerous point by which a European can enter Arabia.”
Burton described his willpower and strength of character thus: “Thoroughly tired of ‘progress’ and of ‘civilisation’; curious to see with my eyes what others are content to ‘hear with ears’, namely, Moslem inner life in a really Mohammedan country; and longing, if truth be told, to set foot on that mysterious spot which no vacation tourist has yet described, measured, sketched and photographed, I resolved to resume my old character of a Persian wanderer, a ‘Darwaysh’, and to make the attempt.”
And to his critics and detractors, Burton simply conveyed: “Judge not; especially when you are ignorant of the case which you are judging.” As if to suggest to everybody that they and their criticism, and the person as well as that which they criticise, are at different levels. They are worlds apart and instead of recklessly criticising, credit ought to be given where credit is due. He let his deeds and accomplishments speak for themselves.
In any case, Burton’s personality was a mixture of remarkable scholarship, unprecedented individualism (egotism) and applied imperialism. Edward Said brands Burton as an Orientalist scholar and a gifted enthusiast whose contributions fall within the genre of imaginative and travel literature, which strengthened the established divisions “between the various geographical, temporal and racial departments of the Orient.” “By the end of the 19th century these achievements were materially abetted by the European occupation of the entire Near Orient (with the exception of parts of the Ottoman Empire, which was swallowed up after 1918). To colonise meant at first the identification – indeed, the creation – of interests; these could be commercial, communicational, religious, military and cultural.”
Orientalism and colonisation quickly became twins, one deriving its compass, strength and legitimacy from the other. The servants of one, by the same token, were also the servants of the other – including Burton and his intellectual and material undertakings. Demarcation lines between the two realms and their personnel were fading away by the day.
Burton’s personal passions, mainstream erudition and avant-garde character were often at loggerheads with each other. It was unpredictable when one of them would prevail over the others and would dominate his individuality. However, when meticulously reading his works, correlating the contents with the author and his inner universes, one can easily sense whenever an element of this triad rises above the rest and starts taking over the author’s disposition. Hence, while reading his works, one can read Burton as well. He has woven himself into his books. His books are himself-incarnate.
That is why to Burton’s wife, publishing the memorial edition of his magnum opus “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah” was the best way to erect a less material, but more imperishable, monument to his name. Accordingly, preserving and knowing Burton’s books meant preserving and knowing himself. Discovering and celebrating them meant discovering and celebrating him. The explorer all of a sudden became set to be explored and the traveller to be travelled towards. She then proclaims at the end of her preface to the edition: “Let us reverently raise up this ‘Monument’, aere perennius (immortal and more lasting than bronze), to his everlasting memory.”
One thing remains certain, though, namely that an impeccable and lasting accord between the three personality dimensions of Burton was impossible. His was a personality of combativeness between his passions, scholarship and character. Everything he wrote testifies to such a state, asserts Edward Said. For instance, “he seems to have taken a special sort of infantile pleasure in demonstrating that he knew more than any professional scholar, that he had acquired many more details than they had, that he could handle the material with more wit and tact and freshness than they.”
Some of Burton’s critics were unhappy about the personal and individualistic nature of his narratives, and about the extent his individuality manifested itself in and through them, calling into question the extent of his works’ objectivity and their scientific depth. But he did not budge, retorting as overconfidently as self-righteously. He pens about “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah” that he has laboured to make its nature correspond with its name, simply because “it is the personal that interests mankind.” Instead of being a weakness, the questioned character of the book, to Burton, is its strength. He afterwards continues in his defence: “Many may not follow my example; but some perchance will be curious to see what measures I adopted, in order to appear suddenly as an eastern upon the stage of Oriental life; and as the recital may be found useful by future adventurers, I make no apology for the egotistical semblance of the narrative. Those who have felt the want of some ‘silent friend’ to aid them with advice, when it must not be asked, will appreciate what may appear to the uninterested critic mere outpourings of a mind full of self.”
Be that as it may, all Burton’s interests were either overshadowed by or were fully saturated with the concerns and potential gains of the British and, to a lesser extent, European as a whole imperialism. The stage for all-out West-East (Occident-Orient) military, civilisational and ideological clashes were set long ago and virtually everything that ever since was happening on the West-East axis was happening in the background of the former. Everything was an integral part of, and was shaped by, it. The secondary goals of all other enterprises served but the clearly defined primary goals of the former. Positively, the orb of imperialism was the only prism through which the Orient was observed and in terms of which the results were marketable to the leaderships and general public of the West (Occident).
Such was the case especially with regard to Burton in his capacity as a British soldier, diplomat and spy. Regardless of what he might have thought in his additional capacities as an explorer, writer, geographer, translator, cartographer and ethnographer, for Burton the Orient was defined exclusively by material possession, by a material imagination, as it were. “England had defeated Napoleon, evicted France: what the English mind surveyed was an imperial domain which by the 1880s had become an unbroken patch of British-held territory, from the Mediterranean to India. To write about Egypt, Syria, or Turkey, as much as traveling in them, was a matter of touring the realm of political will, political management and political definition. The territorial imperative was extremely compelling.”
The principal and secondary objectives of Burton’s secretive pilgrimage and of his writing a book about it clearly make allusion to his scholarly, idiosyncratic and imperialistic self. Above all else, nonetheless, he embodies the sweeping imperialistic (colonial) culture, most faithfully serving it. No wonder that his last words about Egypt, before leaving it, portray it as a prize to be won by any competent and “lucky” European power. Egypt denoted a true treasure with infinite potentials. It was a jackpot.
Burton speaks as though the West enjoyed the right of claiming and controlling Egypt with a focus on the former’s ever-expanding colonisation appetite and aims. With his being a trained soldier and spy fully coming to light, he next presents a blueprint as to how to go about securing Egypt and optimising its potentials. In an instant, nothing else mattered, neither the architecture, nor civilisation, nor socio-economic and political reality, nor manners and customs of the place and its people. The imperialistic impulse eclipsed them all. It almost impaired the author’s thinking.
Burton thus elaborated: “But whatever European nation secures Egypt will win a treasure. Moated on the north and south by seas, with a glacis of impassable deserts to the eastward and westward, capable of supporting an army of 180,000 men, of paying a heavy tribute, and yet able to show a considerable surplus of revenue, this country in western hands will command India, and by a ship-canal between Pelusium and Suez would open the whole of Eastern Africa. There is no longer much to fear from the fanaticism of the people, and a little prudence would suffice to command the interests of the Mosque. The chiefs of corporations, in the present state of popular feeling, would offer even less difficulty to an invader or a foreign ruler than the Olema (scholars). Briefly, Egypt is the most tempting prize which the East holds out to the ambition of Europe, not excepted even the Golden Horn.”
Burton’s bigotry
Burton was a bigot. He rarely says anything positive or praiseworthy about Islam, Muslims, Islamic culture and civilisation. And when he does, he is ungenerous and thrifty, and his words carefully measured and context-dependent. Whatever phenomena he had witnessed and whatever realities he had confronted on the ground, he never even considered stopping his raging presumptions and stereotypes from taking over his emotions and thought patterns that, in fact, initially might have had run against the former. Everything had to be subjected to the pre-determined standards and cast into the pre-formulated moulds. No matter what happened, any form or degree of potential re-examination or amendment was out of question.
For example, having entered the holy mosque in Makkah (al-masjid al-haram) and having witnessed the Ka’bah for the first time, Burton was visibly moved, yet stunned, by the spectacle. The feeling was compounded by the emotional as well as spiritual ecstasy of the pilgrims around him. He admits that there at last the Ka’bah lay, the bourn of his long and weary pilgrimage, realising the plans and hopes of many and many a year. He wondered how few had looked upon the celebrated shrine, and how many, by extension, had been thwarted from doing so.
He was taken aback by the truth that the structure of the Ka’bah – as ancient and famed as it was – featured neither giant fragments of hoar antiquity as in Egypt, nor remains of graceful and harmonious beauty as in Greece and Italy, nor barbarous gorgeousness as in the buildings of India. “It was as if the poetical legends of the Arab spoke truth, and that the waving wings of angels, not the sweet breeze of morning, were agitating and swelling the black covering of the shrine.”
Such original emotions and realisations notwithstanding, Burton, as though dismissing or downplaying them all, simply dubbed the scene “strange” and “unique”. He then confessed the humbling truth to the effect that while the feelings of the rest of pilgrims was the high feeling of religious enthusiasm, his was the ecstasy of gratified pride. While others harboured the feelings of fear and awe towards the Ka’bah, he did those of vanity and self-worth. To him, furthermore, while other worshippers clung weeping to the mere curtain (Ka’bah’s kiswah or cloth) and pressed their beating hearts to the mere stone (Ka’bah’s main building material), he felt a much deeper emotion of self-righteousness and self-fulfilment. He clung to his ego and national identity, and pressed his beating heart to his personal, together with national, preferences and ambitions.
Similarly, as he travelled with his party to Madinah, Burton arrived at a point where a full view of the city suddenly opens upon travellers. He was amazed both by the scene and the reactions of his travel companions. He narrates how people halted their beasts as if by word of command. All of them descended, in imitation of the pious of old, and sat down, jaded and hungry as they were, to feast their eyes with a view of the holy city.
People were ecstatic and overjoyed, praying to and glorifying God and praising Prophet Muhammad in the most beautiful and most expressive words. Burton commented that the poetical exclamations that had risen all around him were such that they demonstrated how deeply tinged with imagination becomes the language of the Arab under the influence of strong passion or religious enthusiasm. And surely, there was nothing more striking at the moment, after the desolation through which the people had passed, than the city of Madinah and the gardens and orchards that surrounded it. Burton next admitted that he understood the full value of a phrase in the Muslim ritual: “And when his (the pilgrim’s) eyes shall fall upon the trees of Madinah, let him raise his voice and bless the Apostle with the choicest of blessings.”
Burton could not deny, nor hide, the initial emotional elation that was saturating his personality as well. He said: “It was impossible not to enter into the spirit of my companions, and truly I believe that for some minutes my enthusiasm rose as high as theirs.” However, subsequent to those few minutes and those inexpressible feelings, when the people remounted and started moving to the city proper, Burton returned to his old self and his being a traveller and explorer with a purpose “returned strong upon him”.
Thenceforth, once inside the city and on his exploratory mission, for Burton it was business as usual. As a result, most of the things in, and associated with, Madinah, were seen as average, insignificant, second-rate and unexciting. If there were some exceptions, though, they were so owing to some external influences. There was little that Madinah on its own could offer to the outside world.
Burton set the tone of his accounts when he wrote at the outset that at first sight Madinah as a city appeared a large place, but a closer inspection proved the impression to be erroneous. It was a small city, smaller than it seemed physically from a distance, and yet – allegorically speaking – it was lesser than it was projected globally. But in order to experience it as such and to verify the truth, one had to visit and inspect the city himself. To Burton, it follows, a visit to Madinah was a fact-finding and myth-busting mission. It was about setting the record straight.
Burton’s description of Madinah’s indigenous natural and man-generated components is peppered with such untimely and inapplicable idioms as, for instance, “white-washed buildings garnished with ugly square windows, an imitation of civilised barracks”; “the picturesque ruins of a large old sabil, or public fountain”; “dull grey mass of houses and ground”; “the thoroughfare is by no means remarkable after (witnessing the splendour of) Cairo”; “I was astonished to see on both sides of the way, in so small a place, so large a number of houses too ruinous to be occupied”; “muddy streets”; the approach to the Prophet’s mosque was chocked up by “ignoble buildings” some actually touching the holy enceinte (wall or enclosure); the Prophet’s mosque was without “outer front” and without “general prospect”; the Prophet’s mosque was a building that had “neither beauty nor dignity”; the Prophet’s mosque was unpleasant and tasteless in terms of architecture and art, showcasing thereby the profound and awful ignorance of people; the columns of especially the southern qiblah arcade or portico (riwak) of the Prophet’s mosque featured the most vulgar arabesque and were generally adorned in such a way as to resemble “the stage-face of a London clown”.
In short, the city of Madinah was primitive and uncivilised. It was unconducive to a comfortable, refined and cultured living. Most of its built environment, in particular the Prophet’s mosque, was unsophisticated and disagreeable. It demonstrated what Burton calls “a painful ignorance of art” and “architectural lawlessness”. Not even about the two most venerable points in Madinah in general, and inside the Prophet’s mosque in particular: the rawdah (the noble garden) and the hujrah (the chamber with the Prophet’s grave), did Burton have anything affirmative to say. Rather, his comments persistently oozed the malice and prejudice which are unmistaken signs of extremist Orientalism and radical imperialism.
In addition, Burton articulated his scepticism that the Prophet’s remains were interred inside the hujrah. Trying to sow doubts – as will be seen later – he deemed that the hujrah was devoid of the Prophet’s body, despite the prevalent Muslim traditions and beliefs. He insinuated that such might yet have been one of the greatest machinations in history.
In the same vein, Burton emphasised that Islam was a bogus religion and Muhammad a bogus prophet. He did not subscribe to the idea that prophets Ibrahim and his son Isma’il ever visited Arabia, much less built the Ka’bah. Burton explains: “Whether Ishmael or his sire ever visited Meccah to build the Ka’abah is, in my humble opinion, an open question. The Jewish Scripture informs us only that the patriarch dwelt at Beersheba and Gerar, in the south-west of Palestine, without any allusion to the annual visit which Moslems declare he paid to their Holy City. At the same time Arab tradition speaks clearly and consistently upon the subject, and generally omits those miraculous and superstitious adjuncts which cast shadows of sore doubt upon the philosophic mind.”
All the miracles associated with Prophet Muhammad, many of whose physical loci were in Madinah, such as the Prophet’s miraculous relationships with and authority over animals, plants, and minerals, as well as over men, angels, and jinns – were probably some “of the many remains of ancient paganism pulled down and afterwards used to build up the edifice of Islam.” As a matter of comparison, Burton further believed, Muslims were more superstitious in matters pertaining to faith than early Persians, ancient Egyptians, the Greeks and Romans. They tend to exaggerate their dogmas. Their superstitions and other fallacies persisted at the ideological core of the edifice of Islam, causing it, as a consequence, to pale in comparison with the civilised, enlightened and sceptical Europe.
In contrast, if there were a few entities in Madinah that were admirable, such was the case only on account of those entities being connected with the impacts of the Mamluks and of the incumbent Ottomans and their ruling Empire. That applied as much to the realm of creative ideas as to the realm of practical creative solutions. Moreover, if some things were evocative of the European brilliance, it was better still.
By way of illustration, Burton writes that on the left side of the Ambari entrance of the city of Madinah there stood the impressive domes and minarets of a pretty Turkish building; there was also nearby a takiyah (Sufi hospice or monastery) erected by the late Muhammad Ali, an Ottoman governor in Egypt, for the reception of Sufi travellers; outside the city there was a conspicuous building, the governor’s palace, which was in the Turkish pavilion style; on the north-west angle of the town-wall was a tall white-washed fort, partly built upon an outcropping mass of rock, whose ramparts and embrasures were giving it a modern and European appearance, and which contrasted strangely with its truly Oriental history; in the al-manakhah suburb the bran-new domes and minarets of the five mosques built by the Turks stood brightly out from the dull grey mass of house and ground; inside the rawdah of the Prophet’s mosque there were handsome branched candelabras of cut crystal, the work – the author believed – of a London house, and presented to the mosque (the rawdah) by the late Abbas Pasha of Egypt; perhaps the most admirable feature in the Prophet’s mosque – out of a very few – was the light cast by the windows of stained glass in the southern wall, whose creation dated back to the rule and artistic flair of the Mamluks in Egypt (to sultan Qaitbay in particular); the Prophet’s mosque’s minarets were likewise admired because they reflected, in part, some of the architectural and artistic class of the Mamluks and, in part, that of the classical period of Ottoman architecture.
Sundry small erections at the qiblah (direction of prayer) side of the Prophet’s mosque were also commendable, exclusively in that they were part of Mamluk and Ottoman artistic legacies as well. They included the niche called the mihrab Suleymani, the minbar or pulpit, and the mihrab al-nabawi (the Prophet’s niche). The two niches were of beautiful mosaic, richly worked with various coloured marbles, and the pulpit was a graceful collection of slender columns, elegant tracery and inscriptions admirably carved.
On the whole, there were only few public and sturdy buildings in the city of Madinah. The principal wakalahs were four in number; one was the Wakalat Bab Salam near the Harim, another the Wakalat Jabarti, and two were inside the Misri gate. They all belonged to Arab citizens. These Caravanserais were used principally as stores, rarely for dwelling-places like those of Cairo. Travellers, therefore, had to hire houses at a considerable expense, or pitch tents to the detriment of health and to their extreme discomfort. The other public buildings were a few mean coffee-houses and an excellent Turkish bath in the Harat Zarawan, inside the town. It was far superior to the unclean establishments of Cairo. It borrowed “something from the luxury of Stambul (Constantinople)”.
Madinah as a soft target
The message of Burton was clear. He conveyed thereby that the city of Madinah and its people, on their own, were nothing civilisation-wise. Were it not for outside influences, they would hardly be able to survive, never mind generate a civilisational consciousness. Just like Makkah, Madinah too was a pilgrimage city. Without pilgrimage and pilgrims, the city would not even be worth mentioning. Its fate was dependence rather than independence, and alliance rather than non-alliance. Determining factors for its socio-economic and political development and future did not reside within itself, but somewhere else. Hence, politically and economically – inside the framework of an emerging new world order – the place was vulnerable. It was susceptible like no other to the effects of power politics. Its role, even though potentially critical in the region, was set never to transcend the level of secondary importance internationally. Its political limits were changing with every generation. Consequently, never was stability its strong point.
This is how Burton presented this philosophy in relation to the concept and sensory reality of architecture: “And here I may remark that the Arabs (of Hijaz) have little idea of splendour, either in their public or in their private architecture. Whatever strikes the traveller’s eye in al-Hijaz is always either an importation or the work of foreign artists. This arises from the simple tastes of the people, combined, doubtless, with their notable thriftiness. If strangers will build for them, they argue, why should they build for themselves? Moreover, they have scant inducement to lavish money upon grand edifices. Whenever a disturbance takes place, domestic or from without, the principal buildings are sure to suffer. And the climate is inimical to their enduring. Both ground and air at Madinah, as well as at Meccah, are damp and nitrous in winter, in summer dry and torrid: the lime is poor; palm-timber soon decays: even foreign wood-work suffers, and a few years of neglect suffice to level the proudest pile with the dust.”
In other words, to Burton and to the outlook he epitomised, Madinah – and the whole Hijaz region – signified neither a major threat nor a foremost economic and political prize to be won. Dealing with it was predicated on a host of other predominantly external, and moderately internal, subtleties. The region was a soft target, as it were, and Burton was optimistic. This can be gleaned from the way he advises his compatriots and other European non-Muslim potential travellers to Makkah and Madinah. He knew all too well that the two holiest places in Islam were inaccessible to non-Muslims. So grave was the danger that catching a European infidel was ordained, in effect, to lead to death.
According to Burton, insofar as European non-Muslims’ visits to the holy cities were concerned, during his time disguise and concealment were still the only ways. He explained that the amount of risk which a stranger must encounter at the pilgrimage rites was still considerable. “A learned Orientalist and divine intimated his intention, in a work published but a few years ago, of visiting Meccah without disguise. He was assured that the Turkish governor would now offer no obstacle to a European traveller. I would strongly dissuade a friend from making the attempt.”
At the same time, however, Burton speaks about foreseeable changing times and improving circumstances, as a result of which the inviolability of the holy places could be somewhat relaxed – willingly or unwillingly. He refers to the roles of both the ruling Ottomans and Western embassies in Jeddah, alluding thus to certain political interferences and even schemes. He bases his argument on the fact that the situation of his time was much better than the one just about 25 years ago. The condition was primed but to keep improving in favour of the demands and needs of foreigners (non-Muslims).
In any case, it remains unclear whether Burton had in mind sheer diplomacy and its subtle as well as affable channels, or the function of imperialism and its compulsive designs. By hook (diplomacy) or by crook (imperialism), things were about to get better. The local (regional) controls and pressures were set to have no choice but to recoil from the growing foreign stimuli.
Burton said on this: “It is true that the Frank is no longer, as in Captain Head’s day (in 1829), insulted when he ventures out of the Meccan Gate of Jeddah; and that our Vice-Consuls and travellers are allowed, on condition that their glance do not pollute the shrine, to visit Taif and the regions lying eastward of the Holy City. Neither the Pasha nor the Sharif would, in these days, dare to enforce, in the case of an Englishman, the old law, a choice thrice offered between circumcision and death…And the Vice-Consul at Jeddah would only do his duty in peremptorily forbidding European travellers to attempt Meccah without disguise, until the day comes when such steps can be taken in the certainty of not causing a mishap; an accident would not redound to our reputation, as we could not in justice revenge it.”
About the increasing roles European powers were playing in the Hijaz, speaks, additionally, Burton’s elaboration as to why he felt safer in Makkah than in Madinah. He said after departing from Madinah to Makkah that he had reason to congratulate himself upon having passed through the first danger. Makkah was so near the coast, that, in case of detection, the traveller might escape in a few hours to Jeddah, where he would find an English Vice-Consul, protection from the Turkish authorities – although blameworthy and liable – and possibly a British cruiser in the harbour. But at Madinah discovery would entail more serious consequences.
The constant instability and vulnerability of Madinah Burton encapsulated along the lines that with the life of the Prophet the interest of Madinah ceased, or rather became concentrated in the history of its holy mosque only. Since then the city has passed through the hands of the rightly-guided, Umayyad and Abbasid caliphs, the Sharifs of Makkah, the Ottoman Sultans, the Wahhabis and the Egyptians. It finally reverted to the control of the Ottomans. But the “game of musical chairs” was not over. Burton revealed that he had heard from authentic sources that the Wahhabis looked forward “to the day when a fresh crusade will enable them to purge the land of its abominations in the shape of silver and gold.”
The Prophet’s mosque
During Burton’s visit to Madinah in 1853, neither the city with its economy and built environment, nor the Prophet’s mosque, was in the best of physical conditions. The entire first half of the 19th century was a period of gloom and doom. The city was captured in 1804 by the Wahhabis. The episode was followed by the Ottoman/Egyptian-Wahhabi war that lasted from 1811 to 1818 and which resulted in the victory of the former. The rule over Madinah – and the entire Hijaz territory – then returned to the Ottomans.
In 1853, the city with all its existential dimensions was yet to fully recover – though a number of signs of a slow upturn were conspicuous. It was still reeling from years of vendettas and negligence. Undeletable scars were readily visible all over, and Burton was an eyewitness. He thus said that as far as he could discover, the reason of the ruinous state of not just Madinah, but also the whole country of Hijaz at that time, was the effect of the old Wahhabi and (Ottoman) Egyptian wars in the early part of the century, and the subsequent misrule of the Turks.
Moreover, specifically on the subject of the impact of the Wahhabis and their style of rule, Burton reflected that they had injured the prosperity of the place by taxing the inhabitants, by interrupting the annual remittances, and by forbidding visitors to approach the Prophet’s tomb. In the main, they were spoken of with abhorrence by the people.
The Prophet’s mosque suffered too. It is yet said that during the said upheavals the Prophet’s tomb, which is believed to have contained a considerable treasure and ornaments sent as presents from every part of the Muslim world, was stripped of most of its riches. That was done in the name of cleansing and purifying the place.
Hitherto, the last time the mosque was rebuilt and expanded was in 1481-1484 by the Mamluk sultan Qaitbay, more than three centuries and a half ago in the twilight of the Mamluk rule. After that, the following Ottoman sultans affected some partial repairs, additions and reconstructions to the mosque: sultan Suleyman (d. 1566), sultan Murad III (d. 1595), sultan Abdulhamid I (d. 1789) and sultan Mahmud II (d. 1839).
However, during the reign of sultan Abdulmecid (d. 1861), which lasted from 1839 to 1861, the mosque was displaying worrying signs of decay, so much so that according to al-Barzanji, sections of its roof deteriorated to the point that they started giving way and crumbling, and according to Ibrahim Rif’at Basha, much of the building – not only the roof – did so. Thus, the shaikh of al-haram of Madinah and of the Prophet’s mosque, Dawud Basha (d. 1851), whom sultan Abdulmecid had appointed to the honourable post in 1844, wrote to the sultan in Istanbul, drawing his attention to the actual state of the mosque and to the urgent need for reconstruction and even expansion. The sultan then met his advisory council, seeking advice from the members of the intellectual and religious leadership in Madinah as well, and, deeming the pressing task at once as an honour, privilege and reasonability, decided to act.
The sultan sent two of his trusted men – one of them, Osman Effendi, an experienced engineer at the imperial court – to survey and evaluate what was needed for the impending reconstruction and expansion assignment. No sooner had the reports and findings been presented to the sultan, than a project supervisor and manager – who theretofore was one of the chief engineers in-charge of the royal palace – was appointed and dispatched to the city of Madinah. He was furnished with the required funds, equipment and materials, and was accompanied by expert craftsmen and experienced labor.
After the extensive search for the appropriate stone to be used in the reconstruction, it was decided to utilise the harder black stone from the wadi (valley) al-harrah for rebuilding the walls, and the softer stone with the reddish hue from the foothills by the wadi al-‘aqiq west of the city, for the columns and vaults. Accordingly, quarries and workshops were set up there for the purpose and stone was cut, hewn, polished and transported on pack animals to the mosque’s site through the al-Bab al-Shami (the Syrian gate) and then through an aperture specifically made in the city’s wall, in order to provide the animals with a shorter route and easier ingress and egress to the worksite. Named after the sultan, the aperture was to develop into the al-Bab al-Majidi (the gate of Majid or Mecid).
The sultan was so concerned about the preparations for the impending reconstruction of the mosque, so he sent two of his emissaries to inspect and report to him on the progress, and to bring back to him a wooden model of the proposed reconstruction, along with samples of the types of stone to be used. In order to minimise interference with the incessant visitors and pilgrims and their activities inside the mosque, the mosque was destroyed and rebuilt gradually, one part or section at a time, starting with the north-western section. There was no advancing to another section of the mosque until a previous one was completed and ready to use. The job in this fashion and with this intensity lasted 12 years, from 1848 to 1860.
The latest rebuilding and expansion comprised the entire mosque except for the Prophet’s honourable tomb, or burial chamber, the three mihrabs and the minbar, as they all were either recently refurbished or made and installed afresh. When completed, the mosque’s qiblah or southern façade was about 86 meters wide, while the width of the northern façade was 66 meters. The length of the mosque between the southern and the northern walls was about 126 meters. This was the measure of the praying area from inside the mosque. But the measure of the size of the total structure, including the Prophet’s burial chamber and its enclosure, as well as the mosque’s gates and their adjoining open spaces – as estimated by Dawah – was about 14,136 square meters. The floor area of the mosque was increased by about 1,293 square meters.
The mosque’s central courtyard was an approximate rectangular structure. It contained a small garden which was surrounded by a low iron fence painted red. It had some trees and was irrigated by a small well nearby. The courtyard was surrounded by twelve colonnades in the direction of the qiblah side, with three on its western side and two each on its eastern and northern sides. The colonnades on the western, eastern and northern sides were wider than before. That, however, was not the case with the southern qiblah side where the width of the colonnades was the same as before. Hence, the number of colonnades on those three sides was reduced by one: on the eastern and northern sides from three to two, and on the western side from four to three colonnades. With that, the inner spaces in those sectors became wider and their usage smoother with less interruption of columns. A new doorway or bab called al-Bab al-Majidi (the doorway of Majid or Mecid) – also known as Bab al-Tawassul or the doorway of Intercession – was added to the northern side. At the north-western corner, a new soaring minaret with three parapets or galleries and built largely after the form of famous Istanbul minarets, was also added. It was attributed to sultan Abdulmecid even though it replaced the old and much smaller wooden one that had stood there since the Mamluk reconstructions, thus increasing the number of the mosque’s prime minarets to five. Two minarets, the Majidiyyah at the north-western corner and the Suleymaniyyah at north-east became of the same Ottoman style. The upper level of the minaret of the Bab al-Rahmah (the doorway of Mercy), which was the shortest of the five, was also demolished and rebuilt. Two parapets or galleries were then constructed to its new upper tier.
The mosque retained its hypostyle architectural character, featuring a central courtyard which was surrounded by a number of colonnades. The latter, in turn, featured numerous columns topped by arches, which supported the lead-covered domes, or curved vaults, as the main agent and means of roofing. The height of the mosque’s ceiling from the inside was unified and seemed consistent, but from the outside, the domes varied in height. The highest was the dome over the Prophet’s burial chamber, followed by that over the main mihrab, as part of the southern qiblah wall, and the dome over the Bab al-Salam (the Salam or Peace doorway). The rest of the domes were of equal height. Some of the domes had strategic apertures for admitting extra light. There were between 26 and 30 of them. The openings were covered with coloured glass so as to create an extra special environment beneath.
The floor level in the western section of the mosque, taken from its original limit during the Prophet’s era (the subsequent additions) and beyond, was higher than in the other parts and particularly the qiblah sector. This was levelled and the whole floor was then paved with marble. Marble was used for the lower section of the qiblah wall and the whole of the honourable rawdah as well. The rawdah columns, apart from being dressed in marble, were also decorated with liquid gold at the top. The marble columns were likewise polished, as were their brass bases. Those columns that were not dressed in marble, their arches and domes were painted in a shade of red resembling the colour of the soft local stone from the wadi al-‘aqiq used in the construction. An area for ablution was also provided outside the mosque between the Bab al-Nisa’ (the Ladies’ doorway) and the Bab Jibril. Four hundred straw-mats were brought over from Egypt each year and were used in summer to cover the floor. Over these, Indian blue cotton mats were placed. Precious carpets were laid in winter. The colonnades to the east of the central courtyard were assigned for the use of women and were surrounded by a wooden enclosure (maqsurah).
Decorating and embellishing the mosque was the final phase of the expansion. When the construction process was over, as a transition from building to decoration, the whole floor of the mosque, as well as the lower half of the southern qiblah wall, were laid with marble. Then, a full-fledged decoration procedure was set to start, which was both intensive and comprehensive. The interiors of between 168 and 170 domes were exquisitely decorated with designs that depicted relatively stylised, or abstracted, trees and flowers of various kinds, and flowing streams, often interlaced with simple and intricate geometric patterns. The pillars of the mosque were then polished and painted with a colour that resembled the colour of stone used in construction. The ornamental abstract and floral items on the pillars’ capitals were painted with the colour gold. After that, the minbar and the multiple mihrabs were next. They – especially mihrabs – were richly adorned with inlaid polychrome marbles of high quality, featuring strictly coherent, two-dimensional geometrical designs, and illuminating as well as edifying calligraphic writings.
When all this was done, a leading calligrapher of the day, Abdullah Zuhdi Effendi, was brought from Istanbul to execute the last and perhaps most significant aspect not only in the mosque decoration, but also in the expansion taken as a whole. He was tasked to decorate by means of calligraphy the numerous domes and their interiors, the pillars, the door frames and the walls – particularly the upper half of the qiblah wall. He did so and the job lasted three full years. According to some far-fetched reports, however, it was ten years. He wrote the selected verses and entire chapters from the Qur’an, the selected traditions (hadiths) of the Prophet, spiritual poems and the names of the Prophet. This was done with such beauty and style that al-Barzanji described the inscriptions as exclusive and incomparable.
In the reconstruction and expansion of the mosque, more than 350 skilled and experienced builders and craftsmen took part, excluding engineers, architects, clerical and administrative staff. The project had cost 700,000 or 750,000 Majidi golden pounds (junayh). This is without the inclusion of the cost of construction materials, experimentation, transportation and administration, as well as the value of other priceless presents offered to the mosque as adornments after the completion of the task. Some of those presents included a couple of golden candle holders meant for the prophet’s tomb, a kiswah (highly decorated cloth) also meant for the tomb, 100 oil lamps with golden chains, crystal and silver chandeliers, etc. The mosque did not undergo any further reconstruction or expansion programs until the modern era of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.
Burton on the Prophet’s mosque
Burton was in Madinah in the middle of the mosque’s reconstruction. The scene was not very pleasant outwardly. It comprised scrappy construction sites and the faded sections of the mosque that waited to be attended to. This, in addition to Burton’s prejudiced and vulgar attitude, prompted the author to utter every bit of negative comments about the building and, by extension, about what it represented.
Burton said about the mosque that, instead of the revealed knowledge and guidance, the learned and religious persons have settled accurately its spiritual rank and dignity. He also seems to have found unwelcome that his host and guide, Shaykh Hamid, was lecturing him on the subject of the historical as well as spiritual meaning and significance of the Prophet’s mosque while on the way to visiting it. That Burton’s priorities – and proclivities – were atypical bears out the fact that the chapter of his book wherein he speaks about the Prophet’s mosque is titled “A Visit to the Prophet’s Tomb”.
It appears as though the mosque per se was a secondary issue, which nevertheless cannot be the case with authentic pilgrimage to Madinah and with authentic pilgrims. Visiting and praying in the Prophet’s mosque ought to be the topmost priority. Everything else either plays second fiddle to it, or is objectionable altogether. However, since Burton’s personality and visit had nothing to do with the authentic pilgrimage, his condition and overall behaviour were rather understandable.
Burton furthermore said that the mosque was mediocre and unexciting, and it lacked an architectural style and identity. “As a building, it has neither beauty nor dignity”, was Burton’s valuation. He entered the mosque through the Bab al-Rahmah (the doorway of Mercy) by a diminutive flight of steps. He was shocked at the mean and tawdry appearance of a place so universally venerated in the Muslim world. Though the holy mosque of Makkah and its Ka’bah did not fare better in his estimation architecture-wise, yet to Burton, “the Meccan temple”, at least, retained some grand and simple qualities as an “expression of a single sublime idea”.
Madinah’s holy mosque, nonetheless, enjoyed none of those. “The longer I looked at it”, Burton wrote, “the more it suggested the resemblance of a museum of second-rate art, an old curiosity-shop, full of ornaments that are not accessories, and decorated with pauper splendour.” It stands to reason, however, that the shortest and soon-to-be-under-construction minaret above the Bab al-Rahmah (the doorway of Mercy) through which Burton had entered – impinging on vistas and viewpoints – might have affected his perspective.
The following is Burton’s description of the mosque: “The Masjid al-Nabi is a parallelogram about four hundred and twenty feet in length by three hundred and forty broad, the direction of the long walls being nearly north and south. As usual in Al-Islam, it is a hypaethral building with a spacious central area, called Al-Sahn, Al-Hosh, Al-Haswah, or Al-Ramlah, surrounded by a peristyle with numerous rows of pillars like the colonnades of an Italian cloister. The arcades or porticoes are flat-ceilinged, domed above with the small Media Naranja, or half-orange cupola of Spain, and divided into four parts by narrow passages, three or four steps below the level of the pavement. Along the whole inner length of the northern short wall runs the Majidi Riwak, so called from the then reigning Sultan. The western long wall is occupied by the Riwak of the Rahmah Gate; the eastern by that of the Bab al-Nisa, the ‘Women’s Entrance’. Embracing the inner length of the southern short wall, and deeper by nearly treble the amount of columns than the other porticoes, is the main colonnade, called Al-Rauzah (the Garden), the adytum containing all that is venerable in the building. These four Riwaks, arched externally, are supported internally by pillars of different shape and material, varying from fine porphyry to dirty plaster. The southern, where the sepulchre or cenotaph stands, is paved with handsome slabs of white marble and marquetry work, here and there covered with coarse matting, and above this by unclean carpets, well worn by faithful feet.”
Upon mentioning the Majidi riwak (arcade or portico), Burton reminded that the mosque was a work in progress. He brought up that the construction of the riwak was begun about five or six years ago by sultan Abdulmecid. He also said that judging from the size of the columns, and from the other preparations which encumbered the ground, that part of the building was set to surpass all the rest. Nevertheless, Burton concluded: “But the people of Al-Madinah assured me that it will not be finished for some time – a prophecy likely to be fulfilled by the present state of Turkish finance.”
In Burton’s book on pilgrimage there is a separate chapter titled “An Essay towards the History of the Prophet’s Mosque”. He wrote therein, synopsising the Ottoman involvements in the architectural evolution of the Prophet’s mosque, that after the Mamluks sultan Suleyman the Magnificent paved with fine white marble the rawdah or garden, which Mamluk sultan Qaitbay, not daring to alter, had left of earth. Sultan Suleyman likewise erected the fine minaret that bears his name. During the dominion of the later sultans, and of Muhammad Ali in Egypt, a few trifling presents of lamps, carpets, wax candles and chandeliers, and a few immaterial alterations, had been made. Denoting the current condition of the mosque, Burton said afterwards: “The present head of al-Islam (sultan Abdulmecid) is rebuilding one of the minarets and the northern colonnade of the temple (as a stage of a total reconstruction and expansion process).”
About the rawdah (the noble garden), Burton admits that it is the most elaborate part of the mosque. However, even there, artistic, and to a lesser extent architectural, incompetence and thoughtlessness became apparent. There was little that was genuinely redolent of a spiritual greatness and profundity. Decorating and embellishing the place was the fascination. As it was a “garden”, it was meant, by all means, to appear as one.
But the location’s status as a “garden” was in spiritual and heavenly terms. Failing to truly comprehend the matter, nor to rise to the challenge with reference to creativity and aesthetics, people simply resorted to excesses in items, particular details, colours, light, inscriptions and patterns. Little did they know that the more was actually less. In the end, the “garden” became an imaginative hyperbole, an assemblage and a jumble of worldly items. It looked like, and reminded its visitors of, anything but a heavenly garden.
Burton elaborated thus: “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. The only admirable feature of the view is the light cast by the windows of stained glass 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 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, 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.”
About the hujrah or the Prophet’s burial chamber, Burton wrote: “The Hujrah or ‘Chamber’ as it is called, from the circumstance of its having been Ayishah’s room, is an irregular square of 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. Inside there are, or are supposed to be, three tombs facing the south, surrounded by stone walls without any aperture, or, as others say, by strong planking. Whatever this material may be, it is hung outside with a curtain, somewhat like a large four-post bed. The external railing is separated by a dark narrow passage from the inner, which it surrounds; and is of iron filigree painted of a vivid grass green – with a view to the garden. Here carefully inserted in the verdure, and doubly bright by contrast, is the gilt or burnished brass work forming the long and graceful letters of the Suls character, and disposed into the Moslem creed, the Profession of Unity, and similar religious sentences. On the south side, for greater honour, the railing is plated over with silver, and silver letters are interlaced with it. This fence, which connects the columns and forbids passage to all men, may be compared to the baldacchino of Roman churches. It has four gates: that to the south is the Bab al-Muwajihah; eastward is the gate of our Lady Fatimah; westward the Bab al-Taubah (of Repentance), opening into the Rauzah or garden; and to the north, the Bab al-Shami or Syrian gate. They are constantly kept closed, except the fourth, which admits, into the dark narrow passage above alluded to, the officers who have charge of the treasures there deposited; and the eunuchs who sweep the floor, light the lamps, and carry away the presents sometimes thrown in here by devotees. In the southern side of the fence are three windows, holes about half a foot square, and placed from four to five feet above the ground; they are said to be between three and four cubits distant from the Apostle’s head. The most westerly of these is supposed to front Mohammed’s tomb, wherefore it is called the Shubak al-Nabi, or the Prophet’s window. The next, on the right as you front it, is Abu Bakr’s, and the most easterly of the three is Omar’s. Above the Hujrah is the Green Dome, surmounted outside by a large gilt crescent springing from a series of globes.”
Burton described his appreciation of the five minarets as follows: “The minarets are five in number; but one, the Shikayliyah, at the north-west angle of the building, has been levelled, and is still in process of being rebuilt. The Munar Bab al-Salam stands by the gate of that name: it is a tall, handsome tower, surmounted by a large ball or cone of brass gilt or burnished. The Munar Bab al-Rahmah, about the centre of the western wall, is of more simple form than the others: it has two galleries, with the superior portion circular, and surmounted by the conical “extinguisher” – roof so common in Turkey and Egypt. On the north-east angle of the mosque stands the Suleymaniyah Munar, so named after its founder, Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent. It is a well-built and substantial stone-tower divided into three stages; the two lower portions are polygonal, the upper cylindrical, and each terminates in a platform with a railed gallery carried all round for the protection of those who ascend. And lastly, from the south-east angle of the mosque, supposed to be upon the spot where Belal, the Apostle’s loud-lunged crier, called the first Moslems to prayer, springs the Munar Raisiyah, so called because it is appropriated to the Ruasa or chiefs of the Mu’ezzins. Like the Suleymaniyah, it consists of three parts: the first and second stages are polygonal; and the third, a cylinder, is furnished like the lower two with a railed gallery. Both the latter minarets end in solid ovals of masonry, from which project a number of wooden triangles.”
Burton then remarked that, obviously, there was no uniformity in the shape or the size of those minarets, and at first sight, despite their beauty and grandeur, they appeared somewhat bizarre and misplaced. But after a few days he found that his eyes grew accustomed to them, and he had no difficulty in appreciating their massive proportions and lofty forms.
In addition, Burton stated that the mosque’s riwaks were irregular. There was little logic in their composition and arrangement. Their columns were of different material; some of fine marble, others of rough stone, plastered over and painted with the most vulgar of arabesques – “vermilion and black in irregular patches and broad streaks, like the stage-face of a London clown.” Burton called that an “(aesthetic) abomination” many of which could be seen also in Egypt on many of the tombs.
The size of columns, moreover, was different, the southern colonnade being composed of columns palpably larger than those in the other parts of the mosque. Scarcely any two shafts owned similar capitals; many had no pedestal, and some of them were cut inexpertly and awkwardly. To Burton, such was a manifestation of a painful ignorance of art. It was a form of architectural lawlessness. As a result, he could not extend his admiration of the minarets to the architectural and artistic ineptitude applied on columns. Simply, there was no “redeeming point.”
Finally, as a parting and, at the same time, most venomous observation – while concluding the long chapter about the Prophet’s tomb and mosque – Burton said that although every Muslim, learned and simple, firmly believed that Prophet Muhammad’s remains had been interred in the hujrah in the city of Madinah, he could not help suspecting that the place and narrative were doubtful “as that of the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem.” Despite him professing the contrary, Burton wanted thus but to throw a doubt upon an established point of history.
His reasoning is in the following manner. It ought to be remembered that a tumult followed the announcement of the Prophet’s death, when the people, as often happens, believing him to be immortal, refused to credit the report, and even ‘Umar b. al-Khattab threatened destruction to any one that asserted it. Moreover the body was scarcely cold when the heated contest about the succession arose between the people. Those and other commotions allowed the case of the Prophet’s burial to be manipulated.
Burton then went on to give three specific reasons for his incredulity. Firstly, from the earliest days the shape of the Prophet’s grave purportedly has never been generally known. For that reason it is that graves are made convex in some countries, and flat in others. Had there been a sunnah – an example or a standard of the Prophet’s grave – such would not have been the case.
Secondly, since al-Samahudi (d. 1505), the most celebrated historian of Madinah and the Prophet’s mosque, allegedly contradicted himself in his accounts concerning the shape of the Prophet’s grave – and he had a privilege of witnessing it – (he is alleged to have once described the coffin, but on another occasion he said that there were no traces of the tomb) “either, then, the mortal remains of the Apostle had, despite Moslem superstition (that he is not dead) mingled with the dust, (a probable circumstance after nearly nine hundred years’ interment), or, what is more likely, the tomb had been removed by the Shi’ah schismatics who for centuries had charge of the sepulchre.”
And thirdly, Burton looked upon the widespread tale of the blinding light which surrounded the Prophet’s tomb, current for ages past and still universally believed upon the authority of the attendant eunuchs, who must have known its falsehood, “as a priestly gloss intended to conceal a defect (of the non-existence of the body)”.
At any rate, Burton was aware that his allegation was farfetched and that little credence could be attached to it. He thus committed furthering it to some future and more favoured investigators. However, his problems were as much methodological as substance-oriented. He conceived the Prophet’s burial as a “fable” or a “myth”, and personal concocted doubts as well as misinterpreted events as “facts”, defiantly emphasising that where a suspicion of fable arises from popular facts, “a knowledge of man and of his manners teaches us to regard it with favouring eye.”
One cannot but wonder – regardless – whether Burton was unhappy that the centuries-old myth in Europe was finally and permanently debunked; namely that the Prophet’s coffin had been hung up by the attractive virtue of a loadstone to the roof of his mosque and that it remained suspended there. The earliest non-Muslim European travellers to Makkah and Madinah: Ludovico di Varthema (d. 1517), Vincent le Blanc (d. 1640) and Joseph Pitts (d. 1735), did their utmost to discredit the unfounded tale and to ascertain the verity that the Prophet had died in Madinah and had been buried there inside the hujrah, just as the mainstream Islamic traditions affirm. Joseph Pitts categorically said after repudiating the myth: “I never heard the Mahometans say anything like it.”
Hence, Burton might not have been contented with the matter, so, consistent with the clandestine goals of his travels, he was determined upon inventing another, perhaps more devastating, falsehood.
Madinah’s domestic life and residential architecture
Burton presented a reasonable picture of the domestic life and residential architecture of the city of Madinah. He did so tripartitely.
First, in general terms he divulged that the houses of Madinah were well built – leastwise in line with the standards of the East. They were flat-roofed and mostly double-storied. The chief building materials were basaltic scoria or lava blocks, burnt brick and palm wood. The best and most spacious houses enclosed courtyards and small gardens with wells where water basins and date trees gladdened the owners’ eyes. Latticed balconies – that is, rawashin (larger projecting latticed windows and balconies with intricate woodworks) – were common, the approximate likes of which could first be seen by the overland European traveller only at Malta. However, by latticed balconies, mashrabiyyahs (smaller oriel, bay, or any other projecting windows with latticework), which were as common in Madinah, were definitely also implied. Whereas most windows – Burton continues – were mere apertures in the wall, garnished, as usual in Arab cities, with a shutter of planking.
Even though the city was architecturally regressive, as regards its general existence, nonetheless, it was slowly rising again. Steadily it was becoming probably “as comfortable and flourishing a little city as any to be found in the East.” It contained between fifty and sixty streets, including the alleys and cul-de-sacs. There was about the same number of harat or quarters. Within the city, several houses were in a dilapidated condition. The best authorities estimated the number of dwellings at about 1,500 within the enclosed part of the city, and those in the suburbs at 1,000, but Burton considered both accounts exaggerated. Rather, he thought that the former contained 800, and the suburbs perhaps 500. The population of the city – according to Burton and some other scholars of the day – should have been between 16,000 and 20,000, of which around four fifths were supposed to live within the enceinte (the city walls) and the rest in suburbs.
As a small detour, Burton said about Madinah’s demography that there were but few family lines (clans) which descended from the “Prophet’s auxiliaries” (companions). He claimed he had heard only of four whose genealogy was undoubted. There was also a race called al-Nakhawilah, who, according to some, were descendants of the Ansar, whilst others derived them from Yazid, the son of Mu’awiyah – the latter opinion, however, being highly improbable. The rest of the population of Madinah was a motley race composed of offshoots from every nation in Islam. The sanctity of the city attracted strangers, who, purposing to stay but a short time, became residents. After finding some employment, they married, had families, died and were buried there with an eye to the spiritual advantages of the place.
Second, Burton referred to hawsh (the plural of which is ahwash) as an organized suburban residential form. Hawsh was a courtyard neighbourhood or even an entire walled village. As reported by Burton, the suburbs to the south of Madinah were a collection of walled villages, with plantations and gardens between. They were laid out in a form called hawsh-courtyards. Similar collective residential forms existed in Egypt as well. They were single-storied apartments organised around and opening into courtyards. The enclosures contained the cattle of the inhabitants; they had strong wooden doors, shut at night to prevent “lifting”, and they were capable of being stoutly defended. The inhabitants of the suburbs were for the most part Badawi settlers. Beyond the suburbs, to the south, as well as to the north and northeast, lay gardens and extensive plantations of palm-trees.
It is noteworthy that the hawsh housing and neighbourhood type, to a large extent, was an urban component too. It was an important shared element that helped the city achieve homogeneity and enhance social interaction. According to Neyazi, hawsh was an urban system of gathering groups of buildings for security reasons after the urban expansion went beyond the city walls in the 16th century. Most of the ahwash were demolished in 1991 as a result of King Fahd’s unprecedented expansion project intended for the Prophet’s mosque and the general central area of the city. About 78 ahwash were identified in the whole city from a map in 1953. Ahwash made it possible for residents to use the common spaces in front of their homes, to sit and gather with friends and neighbours for socialising and to conduct special events such as weddings and feasts. Women shared an isolated corner for their gatherings, while children enjoyed ahwash as safe and protected playgrounds.
The majority of the old city’s residential quarters might have been in this particular nucleated urban form, one way or another. The others were unevenly lined along the zigzagging roads. Ahwash differed in size and number of houses around them. According to a study – albeit without providing a historical time-frame – the largest hawsh in Madinah reached 8,700 m2 with 74 houses, compared to the smallest of 50 m2 and only 8 houses. All in all, small-scale ahwash-courtyards, containing between 5 and 25 houses, dominated the urban landscape of the city. In terms of percentage, the category stood at 66%. The rest was occupied by medium and large-scale ahwash. The former numbered between 26 and 40 houses and was at about 16%; the latter numbered between 41 and 70 houses and was at 18%.
Third, while staying inside the house of his host, Shaykh Hamid, Burton produced a decent account of a daily life inside, as well as the interior of, an average house in Madinah. He wrote that the house was a small corner building, open on the north and east to the Barr al-Manakhah. The ground floor featured only a kind of vestibule in which coarse articles were lying about. The rest of the space was devoted to purposes of sewerage. Ascending dark winding steps of ragged stone covered with hard black earth, one came to the first floor, where the men lived. It consisted of two rooms to the front of the house, one a majlis (meeting and living room), and another converted into a store. Behind them was a dark passage, into which the doors opened; and the back part of the first story was a long windowless room, containing a large copper water-pot and other conveniences for purification. On the second floor was the kitchen, which Burton could not inspect, for it was occupied by the women. For similar reasons, he could not climb and inspect the roof either.
The majlis had dwarf windows, or rather apertures in the northern and eastern walls, with rude wooden shutters and reed blinds; the embrasures being garnished with cushions, where one could sit, morning and evening, to enjoy the cool air. The ceiling was of date-sticks laid across palm-rafters stained red, and the walls were of rough scoriae, burnt bricks and wood-work cemented with lime. The only signs of furniture in the sitting-room were a diwan (as a furnishing style, a line of flat cushions ranged round the room, either placed upon the ground, or on wooden benches, or on a step of masonry) round the sides and a carpet in the centre. A huge wooden box, like a seaman’s chest, occupied one of the corners. In the southern wall there was a suffah, or little shelf of common stone, sunk under a single arch; upon this were placed articles in hourly use, perfume-bottles, coffee-cups, a stray book or two, and sometimes a turban, to be out of the children’s way. Two hooks on the western wall, hung jealously high up, held a pair of pistols with handsome crimson cords and tassels, and half a dozen cherry-stick pipes. The centre of the room was never without one or more shishas (water pipes), and in the corner was a large copper brazier containing fire, with all the utensils for making coffee either disposed upon its broad brim or lying about the floor. The passageway, like the stairs, was spread over with hard black earth, and was regularly watered twice a day during the hot weather.
The household consisted of Shaykh Hamid’s mother, wife, some nephews and nieces, small children “who ran about in a half-wild and more than half-nude state”, and two African slave girls. When the Damascus caravan came in, the household was further reinforced by the arrival of Hamid’s three younger brothers.
Burton underlined that although the house was not grand, it was made lively by the varied views out of the majlis’ windows. From the east, one could look upon the square al-Barr, the town walls and houses beyond it, the Egyptian gate, the lofty minarets of the Harim, and the distant outlines of the Uhud mountain. The north commanded a prospect of the Prophet’s mosque, one of the khamsah masajid (or the five suburban mosques) and of part of the fort-wall. The majlis was tolerably cool during the early part of the day, but in the afternoon the sun shone fiercely upon it.
To Burton, this was a specimen of how the middle classes were lodged at Madinah. The upper ranks affected Turkish and Egyptian luxuries in their homes, as Burton himself had an opportunity of seeing in the house of Omar Effendi, his friend, somewhere in the ‘Barr’ district. However, the abodes of the poor were everywhere very similar and predictable.
About the domestic life inside the house, Burton furthermore wrote: “Our life in Shaykh Hamid’s house was quiet, but not disagreeable. I never once set eyes upon the face of woman, unless the African slave girls be allowed the title. Even these at first attempted to draw their ragged veils over their sable charms, and would not answer the simplest question; by degrees they allowed me to see them, and they ventured their voices to reply to me; still they never threw off a certain appearance of shame. I never saw, nor even heard, the youthful mistress of the household, who stayed all day in the upper rooms. The old lady, Hamid’s mother, would stand upon the stairs, and converse aloud with her son, and, when few people were about the house, with me. She never, however, as afterwards happened to an ancient dame at Meccah, came and sat by my side. When lying during mid-day in the gallery, I often saw parties of women mount the stairs to the Gynaeconitis (the designated section for the women), and sometimes an individual would stand to shake a muffled hand with Hamid, to gossip a while, and to put some questions concerning absent friends; but they were most decorously wrapped up, nor did they ever deign to deroger, even by exposing an inch of cheek.”
“At dawn we arose, washed, prayed, and broke our fast upon a crust of stale bread, before smoking a pipe, and drinking a cup of coffee. Then it was time to dress, to mount, and to visit the harim or one of the holy places outside the city. Returning before the sun became intolerable, we sat together, and with conversation, shishas (water pipe) and chibuks (smoking), coffee, and cold water perfumed with mastich-smoke, we whiled away the time till our ‘Ariston’, a dinner which appeared at the primitive hour of 11 A.M. The meal, here called al-ghada, was served in the majlis on a large copper tray, sent from the upper apartments. Ejaculating “bismillah” – the Moslem ‘grace’ – we all sat round it, and dipped equal hands in the dishes set before us. We had usually unleavened bread, different kinds of meat and vegetable stews; and, at the end of the first course, plain boiled rice eaten with spoons; then came the fruits, fresh dates, grapes, and pomegranates. After dinner I used invariably to find some excuse – such as the habit of a ‘kaylulah’ (mid-day siesta) or the being a ‘saudawi’ – a person of melancholy temperament – to have a rug spread in the dark passage behind the majlis; and there to lie reading, dozing, smoking, or writing, en cachette (in secret), in complete deshabille, all through the worst part of the day, from noon to sunset. Then came the hour for receiving or paying visits…”
And finally, as a bigoted Orientalist and spy, Burton could not fail to notice – and bring to light – the fact that the jihad (holy struggle and war) and politics were typically the grand topics of conversation in the house between the host, Shaykh Hamid, and his guests, some of whom were “great people” and “consequential individuals”. Burton recounted a conversation on which he had eavesdropped, giving thus an inkling of his ultimate penchant and proficiency. The conversation was about the current Ottoman sultan, Abdulmecid, who had ordered the Czar (Russian emperor) to become a Muslim. The Czar had sued for peace, and offered tribute and fealty. But the sultan had exclaimed: “No, by Allah! al-Islam!” The Czar could not be expected to take such a step without a little hesitation, but “Allah smites the faces of the infidels!” Sultan Abdulmecid was thought to be capable of disposing of the “Moskow” (the moniker for Russia and the Russians) in a short time; “after which he would turn his victorious army against all the idolaters of Feringistan, beginning with the English, the French, and the Arwam or Greeks.”
Conclusion
Burton was in Madinah as an Orientalist and spy. His clandestine visit came on the heels of several other non-Muslim European travellers, the most authoritative of whom was John Lewis Burckhardt. His book “Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah” proved to Europeans an invaluable reference on Islam and its holiest places, and to Muslims a useful source of historical information concerning several aspects of not only Makkah and Madinah, but also, to some extent, the rest of the Muslim world. The book, in addition, serves as an exemplary source of Orientalism as a Western scholarly discipline that flourished in the 19th century. It portrays the quintessence, intensity and scope of the discipline, exhibited by the author in his own intellectual, cultural and ideological image.
Burton’s bigotry and vulgarity notwithstanding, his general and vivid description of the city of Madinah in the 19th century, the city’s everyday life and its built environment, merits attention. His empirical and experiential end products were least contaminated and so, are most worthwhile. However, it was in the provinces of ideologising and analysing the minutiae of his travels that he was most opinionated and biased. It was there, consequently, that he recurrently displayed his true colours, and even somewhat undermined the value and legitimacy of his genuine scientific self and the genuine scientific side of his work.***