Pilgrimage as a journey of meaning

This lesson asks you to explain experiences and practices, in various religions and belief systems, that are tied to a quest for meaning or spiritual understanding. The museum holds only the Islamic example, the pilgrimage to Mecca; your class adds the practices of other traditions. ¹

Look at what the expectation asks: how a practice is tied to a search for meaning. Notice what the journey requires of the traveller before, during and after, and compare it with a practice from another tradition.

Read how one encyclopaedia reports the meaning that is given to the pilgrimage. According to the record of Hajj, the Encyclopaedia of Islam article draws on sermons broadcast from Cairo in the years before it was written to outline how the meaning is presented ^{2 3}. Pilgrims are told that it is a monotheistic act of worship, performed as guests of God visiting His house, and that they should go for God alone, avoid quarrelling and ask pardon for their sins; the crowd repeats in the talbiya and at Arafat that God is one without partners ². Preachers stress the unity of the community and the equality of all Muslims shown by the uniform ritual garments, and remind pilgrims of death, since many buy cloth large enough to serve later as a shroud ^{2 3}. The article also observes that a frequently quoted hadith, given by al-Bukhari and Muslim, promises complete forgiveness of sins to a pilgrimage properly performed, but that this forgiveness is not tied to any particular rite ³. What is reported here is what is preached, as an academic encyclopaedia summarises it, and not a pilgrim's own account of the journey.

The record of tawaf reports a disagreement among the schools on whether purity is a condition of circling the House, as al-Nawawi sets it out in al-Majmu' ⁴. For the Shafi'is, and for Malik too, purity from ritual impurity and filth is a condition; they cite A'isha's report that on arriving in Mecca the Prophet ﷺ first performed ablution and then circumambulated, and Ibn Abbas's saying that circumambulation of the House is prayer, given as his own words ^{4 5}. For Abu Hanifa, as al-Nawawi reports him, purity is not a condition, so a tawaf made in impurity is valid; his followers cite the general wording of Qur'an 22:29 ⁴. The Hanbalis have two reports from Ahmad, one like the Shafi'is ⁴. The Shafi'is answer that the verse is general and specified by the hadiths ⁵. The record gives no verdict between these positions.

The two records rest on different kinds of source. The Kuwaiti Encyclopaedia of Fiqh is a work of jurists, and the record of Hajj draws its definition, its duty and its five conditions from it ^{6 7}. The Encyclopaedia of Islam adds academic reconstructions by European scholars of the pilgrimage before Islam, which the record labels hypotheses of that scholarship, not statements from within the Muslim tradition ^{8 9 10}, and it says research into the original meaning of the root h-j-j goes no further than hypotheses ⁸. For the Farewell Pilgrimage it says the accounts of the rites agree in essence with later practice ¹⁰.

The Kuwaiti encyclopaedia defines the hajj by its place, its time, its acts and its conditions ⁶, while the Encyclopaedia of Islam reports what pilgrims are told about its meaning ². Which of these two kinds of source would you rely on to explain how the practice is tied to a quest for meaning, and what is the strongest objection to relying on it?

• Hajj: the jurists' definition and conditions, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam's account of the rites and of the meaning presented to pilgrims.
• Tawaf: its kinds in the schools, and al-Nawawi's report of the views on purity for the circling.

Read the records on Hajj and Tawaf. List the conditions and the acts they name, and mark the ones you think belong to a search for meaning.