From Drury Lane to Makkah
بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ
The following is taken
from From Drury Lane
to Makkah by Shaykh ‘Abd al-Hakim Murad Timothy John Winter.
History has not recorded
the name of the first British Muslim to carry out the rites of haj. Rumours abound of converted crusaders who made
the trip in medieval times and of British Muslims in Ottoman naval service who
visited the hallowed precincts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But the first detailed account of the haj by an English Muslim had to wait
until the Edwardian era, when the artist, Mahmud Hedley Cole Churchward became
the first recorded British “Guest of God”.
Like many Anglo-Muslims
of his day, Churchward was the conservative, gentlemanly scion of an ancient
family; indeed, his ancestors possessed the second oldest house in Britain. His father ran a successful business in
Aldershot, and was well-received in regimental circles, enabling the young
Churchward to meet Queen Victoria and the philanthropist Baroness
Burdett-Coutts. Showing an early
artistic talent, Churchward studied art and became a recognised painter,
specialising in the then highly prestigious field of theatrical scene painting.
A familiar figure in London’s West End
in the 1880s, he worked closely with celebrities as varied as Tennyson,
Millais, Lord Leighton, and the most famous of all Victorian “supermodels”,
Lily Langtry.
A leisurely trip through
Spain opened the young scene-painter’s eyes to the glories of Moorish
architecture, and he was tempted to venture across the Straits to Morocco. Here, in a world still untouched by Western
influence, he quickly fell in love with the gentle and beautiful lifestyle of
Islam. After several visits, he gravely
announced to his startled family that he had become a Muslim.
Churchward travelled on
to Cairo, where he studied for several years at al-Azhar, the Muslim world’s
highest seat of learning. His
scholarship developed apace, enabling him to preach Friday sermons at a small
mosque, and even landing him an appointment to the prestigious post of lecturer
in sirah at the Qadhi’s Academy - no
small achievement for a convert.
In need of more
lucrative work, Churchward then sailed for South Africa, where his art and his
elegant drawing-room manner soon won him the favour of Cecil Rhodes, who made
him the gift of a rare pink diamond. Moving effortlessly between the Muslim
community and the Transvaal’s white elite, it was thanks to Churchward’s
earnest intercession that President Paul Kruger granted permission for the
erection of the first mosque in the Witwatersrand goldfields.
On his return to Cairo,
Mahmud Churchward married the daughter of a prominent Shafi‘i jurist of al-Azhar,
and continued his Arabic lecturing. But
both his head and his heart told him that his Islam was not yet complete: the
magnetic pull of the Fifth Pillar was becoming impossible to resist. As he later recorded, “One evening, as I
strode along the looming pyramid in the sunset, and saw the jagged skyline of
Cairo behind the dreamy African dusk, I decided to carry through what I had
intended to do ever since I turned a Muslim - I would go to the Ka’bah at Makkah.”
As an Englishman, he
realised that this ambition might prove hard to fulfill: there was a danger
that the Caliphate authorities at Jeddah might distrust the sincerity of his
claims to be a Muslim, and unceremoniously turn him away. He, therefore, petitioned the senior ‘ulama for a letter of recommendation. In the awe-inspiring presence of the Chief Qadhi of Egypt, together with Shaykh al-Islam, Shaykh Mehmet
Jemaluddin Efendi, the Ottoman Empire’s highest religious authority, who
happened to be on a visit to Cairo, he submitted to a three-hour examination on
difficult points of faith. Passing with
flying colours, he received a beautifully-calligraphed testimonial signed by
the scholars present. This religious
passport was to serve him well in overcoming the bureaucratic obstacles which
lay ahead.
In 1910, after a further
year in South Africa, the would-be haji
packed his trunks and set out from Johannesburg for the Holy Land. Steamers in those days were slow, and
Churchward faced the added impediment of having to travel via Bombay, where he
spent weeks in frustrating negotiations with shipping-clerks, officials, and an
urbane Lebanese Christian who was the Ottoman consul. At last, he found an elderly pilgrim ship, the
SS Islamic, and this vessel, captained by an irascible Scotsman and armed with
cannon against the threat of pirates, chugged slowly across the shimmering heat
of the Indian Ocean, visiting the poverty-stricken Arabian Gulf before wending
its leisurely way up the Red Sea.
The days passed slowly,
and the time for haj was fast
approaching. Steaming at six knots,
halting at small ports to deliver sacks of mail, which had to be handed over
with six-foot tongs because of the fear of plague, there was little to do
except watch the dolphins, eat curry, and pray on deck with the Indian
pilgrims.
Landing briefly at the
Sudanese port of Suakin, Churchward dropped in on the British Consul, who
airily told him that his plans to visit Makkah were doomed. “My dear chap,” he told him, sipping an iced
drink on the Consular veranda, “to begin with, you will not be allowed to land
at Jeddah.”
But two days later, the Islamic
steamed into the roadstead of the Arabian port. “On the Indian deck,” he recorded, “there
started a great packing of pots, portable stoves, babies and sacks of rice.” It proved necessary to row ashore in a small
dinghy, plunging through the hot spray past a Turkish battleship that had been
moored for so long that the coral had grown up around it, immobilising it
forever. Once his little boat was
beached on the sands, a short conversation with the Ottoman officials
established that all was well, and Churchward went into the town to make
contact with the local representative, wakil,
of Sharifah Zain Wali, a rich businesswoman of Makkah who ran a large
organisation of muthawwifun, pilgrim
guides. Naturally, she could not attend
him here in person - as Churchward later observed, “Owing to the immense
numbers of pilgrims, hundreds of thousands, who reach Jeddah each year, it is
as impossible for these much-respected dignitaries to escort their customers
personally as it would be for Mr. Thomas Cook to chaperone every Cockney
globe-trotter through Europe. Like all
her colleagues, she employed a considerable staff, who saw that the hujjaj carried through the ritual
prescribed by the Prophet.”
The wakil took Churchward to his beautiful Arab house, and explained
how to don his ihram clothing before
letting him settle down for the night. “Finding
a level place on the irregular stones I lay down anew,” he wrote. “This time a thousand million mosquitoes
hovered over me.” The following day, he
telegraphed most of his money through to Makkah, and entrusted, as was the
custom, the remainder of his funds to the muthawwif.
That evening, “while the lamps of Jeddah
glowed in a tropic sunset, two donkeys arrived.” The road beyond Jeddah was little more than a
camel track, but the wakil
confidently led the small party towards the nocturnal east, with Halley’s Comet
hanging splendidly among the stars above. “Against the stars I saw rock faces; we seemed
to be trotting through a kind of canyon. Saving the fall of our donkeys’ feet there was
nothing to be heard, not even a jackal. ... Bang! Explosions suddenly rang from some place high
in the dark hills. No mistake, those
were rifle shots.” He continued, “The
growing brightness showed a very picturesque old building, a kind of tower
several hundred feet above the road. From the steep path serving the structure some
fez-adorned figures ran down. They wore
uniforms and held guns in their hands.”
An Ottoman officer came
up, and politely explained that his men had successfully chased off a band of
robbers. In those days, attacks by
desert Arabs on pilgrims were distressingly common; but Churchward and his
party rode on, trusting in Allah (s.w.t.).
In the oven-like heat of the early
afternoon, after several stops at roadside coffee-houses, they passed the stone
pillars which indicated the beginning of the sacred territory into which no
non-Muslim may intrude.
“On entering here my
guide signed to me that we should say the proper prayer. Touching his heart and forehead he muttered
the Fatihah and held his hands together as if to receive Heaven’s Blessing. Then he said, ‘Hina al-Haram,’” meaning “Here is the Holy Ground?”
“Some pigeons, wild
doves and other birds were the first specimens of desert fauna I came on. They appeared perfectly tame, and fluttered a
few inches from our faces. Some sat on
the hard stones and allowed the donkeys to go right upon them. Very carefully the wakil led his beast around the little creatures, for no man will
dare to kill a living thing here.”
In the Holy City at
last, after almost two days on the road, Churchward and his companions entered
the tall mansion-cum-hotel of the Sharifah. This pious and aristocratic lady, a direct
descendent of the Holy Prophet (s.a.w.),
had family connections in Cape Town, where her company of pilgrim guides had
been recommended to Churchward. Unpacking his goods, he sent her a gift of a
Gouda cheese, which was borne up to her unseen presence by excited servants. The Sharifah herself shortly called to him
from behind a wooden mashrabiyyah screen,
“Mubarak! Welcome to my house.” “I replied that I felt proud to live in her
house, whereat she answered that she was proud of me. ‘The kafirun
make good cheese,’ declared the lady, ‘they must have many cows.’”
The English pilgrim
struggled up seven flights of stairs, bathed, and slept on the roof. He was awoken before dawn by the strange
lilting sound of Ottoman bugles, and after prayers and a breakfast of melons he
set off behind the muthawwif towards
the Sacred Mosque. Taking care to scuff
their feet disdainfully on some well-worn flagstones, which the muthawwif declared were some former
idols of Quraysh which had been cast down there by the Prophet (s.a.w.) to be humiliated, Churchward and
his companion finally entered the House of Allah (s.w.t.). The first stage of
a five-month journey had finally come to an end.
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