The Footprint of the Prophet

PERWEEN HASAN

THE FOOTPRINT OF THE PROPHET

The way custo m and ritual are tran smitted fro m one cul­ famous of th ese footprint sh rines is th e Dome of the ture to another, with or without re taining th eir origi nal Rock injerusalem. It marks th e place where th e Prophet meaning, is often th e subject of histori cal investigati on, mounted Buraq and set off on his Nig h t j ourney before with th e result that hardly anything turns out to be really ascending to th e Divin e Presence (mi'raj). Before he set new. That religious symbols, custo ms, and rituals are off, his foot is su pposed to have left an imprint on th e share d should not be surprising where th ere is a co m­ roc k. That ro ck is separat ed fro m th e main one; it is in mon religious history, as in th e case ofjudaism , Ch ris­ th e southwest corner in a separate shrine, placed under tianity, and Islam , or of Hinduism and Buddhism. But it an iron grille inlaid with silver, which was ordered by the is more surprisin g wheologicallyen commo opnapose litiesd as appear in reli­ Ottoman Sultan Ahmed in 1609. 1 gions that are as ideologically opposed as Hinduism and While scholars still deb ate man y things about the Buddhism , on th e one hand, and Islam , on th e other. Dome of th e Rock th e tradition assoc iating th e roc k and T hey show th at when a religion of foreign origin takes the Prophet'sjourney p robabl y started quite ea rly. From ro ot and is finally accepted, local customs and ritua ls can th e fourth century onwa rd, th e marks on th e rock in the become part of its re ligious practice, even th ough th ey cen ter of th e Church of th e Ascension on th e Mount of may be rej ected by orthodoxy. Olives were shown to pilgrims as foo tprints mad e by The veneration of the Qadam Rasul , or Foo tprin t of Christ at th e moment of his Ascension. It is possible th at th e Prophet, is one example. The faithful believe th at th e footprint of th e Prophet Muhammad nearby was th e whenever Muhammad trod on a roc k his foot always left Muslim an swer to th e Ch ristian re lic; it was shown to an imprint. This beliefstarte d very ea rly in Islam , and al­ Muslim pilgrims perh aps fro m th e tim e ofcAbd al-Malik th ough it has never had the sanc tio n of orthodoxy and in the seven th cen tury.The inscrip tion s inside th e Dom e no hadi th or early au thority can be cited to support it, it of th e Rock are of th e maj or Christolog ical passages in is widely held. It belongs among a grou p of popular mir­ th e Qu~an th at link th e new faith to th e older one . acles - th at Muhammad 's bo dy cast no sha dow, his hair Muqaddasi, a tenth-eentury au thor, re ports that th e co uld not be consumed by fire, flies never settled on his Dome ofth e Rock was built to give Muslims a monumen t clothes, and his sanda ls never left any imprint on th e as magnificent as th e Ch ristians had in th e Ch urch ofth e sand - attributed to th e Prophet. The footprin ts in Holy Sepulchre." The resemblan ce between th e Dome of stone of one or both his fee t are venerated in shrines in th e Rock and th e ch urches in j erusalem assoc iated with various parts of th e Muslim world and are all th e proof th e incidents ofChrist's life , like th e Ch urch of the Holy th e faithful need for th e mi racle of th e foo tprin t. Sepulch re and th e Ch urch ofth e Ascension, streng thens In th e Arab world th e Qadam Rasul had antecede nts th is argu me n t. Its octagonal for m eventually becam e in both judaism and Christianity. It also had a tradition popular in th e Muslim world , in the mausoleums ofSul­ in th e Subcontinent where th e worship of sac red foot­ tan Salah al-Din in Dam ascus and of Uljaytu in Sul tan­ prints had a legacy go ing back to th e earliest days of iyya, for example, as th e ideal type for tombs, th e most Buddhism and Hinduism . Co nse quently, in spite of its popular ofall comme morative buildings in Islam. unorthodox base, sultans ru ling in th e nam e of Islam In Damascus, th e Mosque of th e Footp rin t (Masjid al­ ofte n used th e footprint to enhance th ei r popularity and Qadam) provides an other example. It seems originally legitimacy. Almost all th e shrines housin g foo tprints to have be en connected with Moses and only later tra ns­ were built under royal patronage. ferred to Muhammad's tradition. Another imprin t on Sh rines built to house footprints of the Prophet are bla ck stone, now in th e library of th e orato ry of Sitt kn own as Qadam Sharif or Qad am Rasul Allah . They are Ruqayya in Damascus, was tran sported fro m Hawran in not meant to function as mosques, althoug h some have southern Syria in th e twelfth cen tury, th e first mentio n of mistak enly been called mosques. T he earliest and most a tran sported footprin t. 336 PERWEEN HASAN

In Cairo there are two footprints - one in the Athar Sometimes buddhapadas are found in natural sur­ al-Nabi Mosque and the other in the tomb of the Mam­ roundings, impressed on rocks as at Pataliputra, Bihar, luk Sultan Qa:>it Bay (d . 1496), who, according to the and Adam's Peak, Sri Lanka, which are associated with nineteenth-century historian Ahmad Dahlan, had pur­ the Buddha's legendaryvisits. Rubbings ofthem were lat­ chased it for the sum of20,000 dinars. In Tanta, north of er taken to China, transferred to new stone slabs, and Cairo, there are impressions of both feet of the Prophet sent to japan, Burma, Thailand, and Cambodia. Philo­ in the shrine ofSayyid Ahmad al-Badawi. sophically, the footprints were meant to suggest the In Istanbul footprints are found in the tomb ofSultan boundary between the Buddha's visibility and invisibility, cAbd ai-Hamid I, the tomb of Abu Ayyub ai-Ansari, the but to the simple believer, they represent a magically Companion of the Prophet, and in the Khirka-i Sa'iadet powerful and auspicious sign that guarantees deliver­ (Mantle of the Prophet) room of the Topkapi Palace. ance from the effects of evil karma (deeds). Abu Ayyub died during the first Arab attempt by Yazid In the Islamic tradition, the Qadam Rasul was never bin Muawiya in 672 to seize the city, and at his own used to symbolize the presence of the Prophet in the request had been buried under its walls. When the city illustration ofany biographical story or legend, but inso­ fell to Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453, the legendary far as the buddhapada is supposed to mark an actual site tomb was discovered, and in 1458 a mosque and tomb where the Buddha had been, the similarity between the were built by the sultan on that spot. In the early nine­ two traditions seems clear. In ja'far Sharif's nineteenth­ teenth century, Sultan Mahmud II took a print of the century account of Muslim customs in India, the foot­ foot among other relics of the Prophet in the treasury of prints kept as talismans by families and the rituals per­ the Topkapi Palace and placed them in this tomb. The formed before them indicate that they had almost suburb ofEyyub grew up around it outside the Byzantine achieved the status ofcult objects." walls. Placing the footprint in the tomb seems to have in­ Among the Hindus, the tradition of vishnupada, the creased its sanctity, until it became so holy that the footprint of Vishnu, is also very ancient, and several enthronement ceremony of the Ottoman sultans, "the myths sustain it. The creation myth based on Vishnu's Girding of the Sword," was performed in this tomb. three steps is the most important Vedic myth of the god. On the Subcontinent the worship of footprints goes Pada means step as well as foot or footprint, and all are back to ancient Hindu/Buddhist times and even pre­ worshiped as vishnupada. dates the worship of the Buddha image. Representations The Vayu Purana narrates how Vishnu as the dwarf ofthe Buddha had become a generally accepted practice tricked the demon king Bali into giving him the space he around the beginning of the second century A.D . Before could cover in three strides; he then stepped over the that Buddhist art, and for that matter Hindu andjain art heaven, sky, earth, and th e whole universe. The city asso­ as well, did not try to represent the central personalities of ciated with this myth is Gaya, in the state ofBihar in east­ their religions in human images; instead, aniconic sym­ ern India. It is one of the holiest places in India for Hin­ bols were substituted for the holy person. Minor deities dus, and the Vishnupada Temple there is said to mark such as serpent divinities and tree-spirits had, of course, the spot where Vishnu left his footprints on a rock when been worshiped in human form from very early times. he defeated the demon. The footprints are set within a One of the most widely used devices to indicate the silver basin and are the chiefobject ofworship. Buddha's presence was the buddhapada or footprint. The existence of another ancient sacred vishnupada Originally as in the relief of the Bharhut stupa pillars of site is recorded in the inscription on the Mehrauli iron the second century B.C ., footprints appear as signs indi­ pillar in the Quwwatul Islam Mosque in Delhi. It records cating Buddha's presence in a biographical or legendary that the great king Chandra (probably of the Gupta scene. They are marked by the wheel of the doctrine of dynasty, and hence of the fourth century A.D.) had the Buddha with a lotus flower as its hub. From the sec­ erected the Vishnu column (dhvaja) on Vishnupada ond century A.D. the footprint was separated from its Hill. narrative context, and appears as an isolated cult object, The first myth involving the foot ofVishnu is from the as it is seen at Amaravati in Andhra Pradesh. There, in Bhavisya Purana. It tells the story of how the sage Atri addition to the wheel, there are trident (trisula) signs on and his beautiful, devoted wife Anusuya were meditating the heel and toes which represent the three gems of on the banks of the River Ganges when the gods Buddhism: the Buddha, the dharma (doctrine) , and the Brahma, Siva, and Vishnu approached Atri to grant him sangha (community). a wish. Overcome with desire for Anusuya they were