Islam: A Guide for Jews and Christians - Electric Scotland

44 t CHAPTER TWO
accept the existence of other gods in the “exalted assembly,” while
at the same time denying that they had any autonomous power,
though perhaps they could help humans if God so willed.
If we turn from the Muslims’ much later impressions of pre-
Islamic Mecca to the contemporary, though far more oblique, evidence
of the Quran, we can get an impressionistic overview of how
the gods of pagan Mecca were worshiped in the days before Islam.
The chief liturgy was doubtless sacrifice, of both animals and cereals,
and the rites—a common one was divination—were performed
not in but outside the Kaaba and several other places in the
vicinity, notably at Zamzam. Pilgrimage to Mecca by the surrounding
tribes was a popular—and seasonal—practice, and included
ritual processions or circumambulation (tawaf ) around the
Kaaba and a similar rite between the two hills of Safa and Marwa
just next to the Kaaba sanctuary. The rite called the hajj took place
at sites outside Mecca. There was sacrifice at a place called Mina
and “standings” and “runnings” at Muzdalifa and Arafat, the latter
a high place eleven miles from Mecca. These are only fragments
of ritual; the larger religious contexts in which they originally occurred
have been removed or forgotten, and in their place we have
transparently artificial connections with Abraham and Ishmael.
What is most curious, however, is that these exurban rites had little
or nothing to do with Mecca or the Quraysh and yet became the
centerpiece of Muslim ritual, whereas the Quraysh-directed and
Mecca-centered festival called the umra was relegated to the status
of the “lesser pilgrimage,” which might or might not be made at
the pilgrim’s pleasure.
Many of the pilgrimages of pre-Islamic Arabia had fairs attached
to them. There does not appear to have been such connected
with Mecca, however. The close confines of the town may
have been too dangerous for the hostilely jostling nomads since all
the fair sites associated with the hajj were deserted places where
the Bedouin could camp at a safe distance from one another. It is
somewhere in this complex of not always coherent evidence that
we must locate the prosperity of the Quraysh, as verse 4 of sura
106 invites us to think, and possibly their later opposition to
Muhammad’s preaching.