MECCA THE MYSTIC 



A New Kingdom Within Arabia 

 By Dr. S. M. Zwemer 



OF ALL the provinces of Arabia, 

 El Hejaz, which recently re- 

 volted against Turkish rule and 

 set up its own kingdom, with the Grand 

 Sherif of Mecca as sovereign, undoubt- 

 edly has most frequent contact with the 

 outside world, yet is the least known. 

 Parts of it have never yet been explored. 



El Hejaz is so named because it forms 

 "the barrier" between Tehama, the coast 

 province on the south, and Nejd in the 

 interior. Its sole importance is due to 

 the fact that it contains the two sacred 

 cities, Mecca and Medina, which for 

 more than thirteen centuries have been 

 the centers of pilgrimage for the Moslem 

 world. 



Before the railway was completed from 

 Damascus to Medina, the port of that 

 city, Yenbo, was as flourishing as Jiddah 

 is now ; but at present it has almost the 

 appearance of a deserted city. The whole 

 pilgrim traffic has been diverted, and even 

 the caravan route from the coast to Me- 

 dina is at present unsafe. 



The importance of Mecca is not due to 

 its resident population of perhaps ioo,- 

 ooo, but to the more than 200,000 pil- 

 grims who visit it each year from every 

 nation of Islam. Statistics are hopelessly 

 contradictory and confusing regarding 

 the number of annual visitors. Accord- 

 ing to Turkish official estimates, in 1907 

 there were no less than 280,000 pilgrims. 

 It is a marvel how so many thousands 

 can find food, shelter, and, most of all, 

 drink in such a desert city. 



The religious capital of Islam, and now 

 the temporal capital of the new Kingdom 

 of Arabia, affords an index to the growth 

 and strength of Mohammedanism in 

 various parts of the world, for one can 

 rightly gauge the strength of religious 

 fervor in this great non-Christian faith 

 by the number of those who go on pil- 

 grimage. 



From Java, Bengal, West Africa, Cape 

 Colony, and Russia, as well as from the 

 most inaccessible provinces of China, 

 they come every year and return to their 

 native land — if they escape the hardships 

 of travel — to tell of the greatness and 

 glory of their faith, however much they 

 may have been disappointed in the actual 

 condition of the city and its sacred build- 

 ings. 



mohammed's prophecy fulfilled 



When we consider Mecca, Moham- 

 med's words of prophecy in the second 

 chapter of his book seem to have been 

 literally fulfilled: "So we have made you 

 the center of the nations that you should 

 bear witness to men." The old pagan 

 pantheon has become the religious sanc- 

 tuary and the goal of universal pilgrim- 

 age for one-seventh of the human race. 



From Sierra Leone to Canton, and 

 from Tobolsk to Cape Town, the faith- 

 ful spread their prayer carpets, build 

 their houses (in fulfillment of an impor- 

 tant tradition, even their outhouses!), 

 and bury their dead toward the meridian 

 of Mecca. If the Old W T orld could be 

 viewed from an aeroplane, the observer 

 would see concentric circles of living 

 worshipers covering an ever-widening 

 area, and one would also see vast areas 

 of Moslem cemeteries with every grave 

 dug toward the sacred city. 



Mecca is no longer a veiled city. A 

 score of intrepid travelers have unveiled 

 it. From Bartema, Wild, and Joseph 

 Pitts to Burton, Burckhardt, Hurgronje, 

 and Courtellemont, they took their lives 

 in their hands, herded with strange com- 

 panions, underwent untold hardships, 

 and by luck or pluck came scatheless out 

 of this lion's den of Islam. According 

 to Doughty, scarcely a pilgrimage takes 

 place without some persons being put to 

 death as intruding: Christians. An edu- 



i57 



