By Titus Burckhardt, Foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Introduction by Jean-Louis Michon

From the World Wisdom online library: www.worldwisdom.com/public/library/default.aspx Chapter I Prologue: The Kaʿba

e shall begin our investigations into the both from the Jews, who pray facing Jerusa Wart of Islam with a description of the lem, and the Christians who “orientate” them Ka ʿba and its liturgical role, the literally central selves literally by facing the sunrise; he elects to importance of which for Islamic art, and above join the “religion of the center”, which is like all for its architec ture, is quite clear. As is well the tree from which the other religions stem. known, every Muslim faces the Kaʿba to recite “Abraham was neither Jew nor Christian”, says the canonical prayers, and every mosque is ac the Koran, “but detached (ḥanīf) and submit cordingly orientated in this direction; in the ting (muslim)…” (3:67). The impact of these subsequent chapters we shall demonstrate ev words is that the faith of Abraham—who is erything that follows from this. here the very typification of a Muslim—is free Th ere is a further reason for speaking about from the specializations and limitations repre the Kaʿba at the beginning of this book. It is sented, in Muslim eyes, by the Jewish concept the only worked object that plays an obligatory of a people chosen to the exclusion of all others, part in Muslim worship. If it is not a work of art and by the Christian dogma of a unique savior, in the proper sense of the term—being no more the Son of God. than a simple cube of masonry—it belongs Let us note that the Koranic account of rather to what might be termed “proto-art”, the building of the Kaʿba by Abraham does whose spiritual dimension corresponds to myth not stress his role as ancestor of the Arabs—his or revelation, de pending on the point of view. descendants through Ishmael and Hagar—but Th is means that the inherent symbolism of the his function as the apostle of the pure and Kaʿba, in its shape and the rites associated with universal monotheism that Islam purposes to it, contains in embryo everything expressed by renew. Whatever the his torical basis2 of this the sacred art of Islam. account, it is inconceivable that the Prophet The Kaʿba’s role as the liturgical center of should have invented it for more or less politi the Muslim world is bound up with the fact cal motives, apart from questions of sincerity. that it demonstrates Islam’s link with the Abra- The pre-Islamic Arabs were obsessed with ge hamic tradition and thereby with the origin of nealogy—which is, in any case, a charac teristic all the monotheist religions. According to the of nomads—and would never have accepted Koran, the Kaʿba was built by Abraham and his the “interpolation” of a hitherto unknown son Ishmael, and it was Abraham who estab- ances tor.3 If the Bible makes no reference to a lished the yearly pilgrimage to this sanctuary. sanctuary founded by Abraham and Ishmael in Center and origin: here are the two aspects of Arabia, this is because it had no cause to re one and the same spiritual reality, or again, one fer to a sanctuary placed outside the land and could say, the two fundamental options of every destiny of Israel. It nevertheless recognized the spirituality.1 spiritual destiny of the Ishmaelites by includ For the generality of Muslims, to pray fac ing them in God’s promise to Abraham. Let us ing the Kaʿba—or facing Mecca, which comes note finally—without straying too far from our to the same thing—expresses a priori a choice: subject—that it is typical of a divine “geom by this gesture, the Muslim is distinguished etry”, which is both strict and unforeseeable, to 2 rologue: e aʿba make use of an Abrahamic sanctuary lost in the climate, where the idea of divine transcendence desert and forgotten by the great religious com outweighs everything. But God “dwells”, as it munities of the time, in order to have a starting were, in the ungraspable center of the world, as point for renewing monotheism of a Semitic he “dwells” in the innermost center of man. It complexion. 4 The question so many students will be recalled that the Holy of Holies in the of Islam ask themselves: “What happened at Temple at Jerusalem which was likewise a di Mecca to bring about a new religion?”, could vine “habitation”, had the shape of a cube, like well be put the other way round: “For what rea the Kaʿba. The Holy of Holies, or debir, con sons did the new, nascent religion first manifest tained the Ark of the Covenant, whereas the itself in this spot?” interior of the Kaʿba is empty;6 it contains only The eminently archaic form of the Mecca a curtain, which oral tradition calls the “ curtain sanctuary accords well with the Abrahamic of Divine Mercy ( Raḥmah)”. origin attributed to it. It has, indeed, been The cube is linked to the idea of the center, frequently destroyed and rebuilt, but the very since it is a crystalline synthesis of the whole of name Kaʿba, which means “cube”, is a warrant space, each face of the cube corresponding to that its shape has not been essentially modified; one of the primary directions, namely the ze it is slightly irregular, being twelve meters long, nith, the nadir, and the four cardinal points. Let ten meters broad and about sixteen meters us remem ber, even so, that the positioning of high. the Kaʿba does not entirely correspond to this The building is traditionally covered with a scheme, because it is the four corners, and not “ vesture” (kiswah ) which is changed yearly and the sides of the Kaʿba, which face the cardinal which has, since the Abbasid period, been made points, doubtless because the cardinal points of black cloth embroidered with gold lettering, mean, in the Arab concept, the four “ corner pil which bespeaks in striking fashion the both ab lars” ( arkān) of the universe.7 stract and mysterious aspect of the edifice. The The center of the terrestrial world is the custom of “clothing” the sanctuary was appar point intersected by the “axis” of heaven: the ently introduced by an ancient Himyarite king, rite of circumambulation ( ṭawāf), around the and seems to be part of an extremely venerable Kaʿba, which is to be found in one form or Semitic tradition which is, in any case, alien in other in the majority of ancient sanctuaries,8 is style to the Greco-Roman world: to “clothe” a then seen to reproduce the rotation of heaven house is, in a way, to treat it as a living body or around its polar axis. Naturally, these are not as an ark bearing a spiritual influence, and that the interpretations attributed by Islam to these is how the Arabs understood it. As for the cele ritual elements, but are inherent a priori in brated black stone, it is enclosed not in the cen a view of things shared by all the religions of ter of the Kaʿba but in an outer wall close to its antiquity. meridian angle. It is a meteorite, and therefore The “axial” character of the Kaʿba is, how a stone fallen from heaven, and the Prophet did ever, affirmed by a well-known Muslim legend, no more than confirm its sacred character.5 Fi according to which the “ancient house”, first nally, let us mention the outer precinct, roughly built by Adam, then destroyed by the flood circular, of the ḥ aram, which forms part of the and rebuilt by Abraham, is situated at the low sanctuary. er extremity of an axis which traverses all the The Kaʿba is the only Islamic sanctuary heavens; at the level of each heavenly world, which can be compared to a temple. It is com another sanctuary, frequented by angels, marks monly called the “house of God” (baytu ʾLlāh), this same axis, the supreme prototype of each and it has in fact the character of a “divine dwell of these sanctuaries being God’s throne, around ing”, paradoxical as this may seem in a Muslim which circulates the chorus of the heavenly

Opposite: 2. The Kaʿba at Mecca rologue:  e aʿba 3 4 rologue: e aʿba spirits; but it would be more exact to say that tion of his islām: arriving at the threshold of the they circulate within it, since the divine throne sacred area surrounding Mecca, the pilgrim di encloses all creation. vests himself of all his clothing, purifies himself This legend bears clear witness to the re with water from head to toe, and garbs him lationship which exists between ritual “orienta self in two pieces of seamless cloth, one around tion” and Islam as submission or abandonment his waist and the other over one shoulder. It is (islām) to the Divine Purpose.The fact of turn in this “consecrated” state ( iḥrām) that he ap ing in prayer to a single point, ungraspable as proaches the Kaʿba to accomplish the rite of such but situated on earth and analogous, in circumambulation ( ṭawāf), ceaselessly invok its singleness, to the center of every world, is ing God. Only after this visit to the “house of eloquent of the integration of human will in God” does he set out for the various places as the Universal Will: “and to God are all things sociated with sacred history, and completes his returned” (Koran 3:109). At the same time, it peregrination by sacrificing a ram in memory of will be seen that there is a difference between Abraham’ s sacrifice.10 this symbolism and that of Christian worship, We shall see later how these two modes of where the point of orientation is that part of the adoration, the one static and the other dynamic, sky where the sun, the image of Christ reborn, are reflected at different levels in the world of rises at Easter. This means that all orientated Islam. In the present context we wish to show churches have parallel axes, whereas the axes of only one thing, namely, that the Muslim soul all the mosques in the world converge. and, thereby, Muslim art are grounded in a The convergence of all the gestures of ado world that is closer to that of the Old Testa ration upon a single point becomes apparent, ment Patriarchs than to the Greco-Roman uni however, only in the proximity of the Kaʿba, verse, to which Islam had to turn for the first when the host of believers bows down in com elements of its art. Let us not forget that Islam mon prayer from all sides towards a single cen was born in a “no man’s land” between two great ter; there is perhaps no more immediate and civilizations, the Byzan tine and the Persian, tangible expression of Islam.9 which were at the same time empires disput It will have been gathered that the liturgy ing Arabia, and which Islam had to fight and of Islam is linked to the Kaʿba in two differ overcome for its own survival. Compared with ent but complementary modes, one static and these two worlds, both of which had an artistic the other dynamic: the first mode means that heritage11 tending towards naturalism and ra every place on earth is directly attached to the tionalism, the Kaʿba and its associated rites are Meccan center, and it is in this sense that the like an anchor cast in a timeless deep. Prophet said, “God has blessed my community by giving them the face of the whole world as @•••••! a sanctuary”. The center of this unique sanctu ary is the Kaʿba, and the believer, who prays in When the Prophet had conquered Mecca, he the universal sanctuary, finds that all distance went first to the sacred enclosure and performed is momentarily abolished. The second mode, the circumambulation of the Kaʿba on camel- which is dynamic in nature, is made manifest in back. The pagan Arabs had surrounded this the pilgrimage, which every Muslim must make area with a girdle of 360 idols, one for each at least once in his lifetime, if he is able. There day of the lunar year. Touching these idols with is an aspect of divestment in the pilgrimage, his riding stick, the Prophet overturned them and this ordinarily transmits itself to the entire one after the other, while reciting the verse Islamic ambience; at the same time, its impact from the Koran, “Truth has come; vanity has on the believer is that of a dramatic recapitula vanished; in truth vanity is evanescent” (17:81). rologue: e aʿba 5

3. Detail of embroidery with lettering from a kiswah (vesture of the Kaʿba)

He was then handed the key of the Kaʿba and habited it, represent the passions which invest went in. The inner walls were adorned with the heart and impede the remembrance of God. paintings executed by a Byzantine artist on Therefore, the destruction of idols—and, by ex the orders of the Kaʿba’s pagan masters; they tension, the putting aside of every image likely portrayed scenes from the life of Abraham and to become an idol—is the clearest possible certain idolatrous customs. There was also a parable for Islam of the “one thing necessary”, representation of the Holy Virgin and Child. which is the purification of the heart for the Protecting this icon of the Holy Virgin with sake of tawḥīd, the bearing of witness or the both hands, the Prophet ordered that all the awareness that “there is no divinity save God”. others be effaced. The icon of the Virgin was To create a new Muslim iconography would later destroyed by a fire.12 This traditional story be superfluous after such an example and would demonstrates the meaning and the scale of what deprive the parable of its meaning. In Islam, is erroneously called “Muslim iconoclasm”, and icons are replaced by sacred writing which is, as which we would rather call “ aniconism”: if the it were, the visible embodiment of the Divine Kaʿba is the heart of man, the idols, which in Word. Notes to Chapter I

1. “Th e whole existence of the peoples of antiquity, and of 9. Inside the Kaʿba there is no more ritual “orienta traditional peoples in general, is dominated by two pre tion”; the diff erence between each convergent direc siding ideas, the idea of Center and the idea of Origin” tion is annulled, and the custom of the Prophet re (Frithjof Schuon, Light on the Ancient Worlds [London: quires that four brief prayers be made, facing each side Perennial Books, 1965], p. 7). of the sanctuary in turn. Th us it is that in the world’s spiritual center, the contrasts or oppositions which typ 2. It is possible for a sacred story to be more true—in the ify the world are no longer dominating but dominated. sense of having a greater reality—than a purely empirical According to a Sufi interpretation, the Kaʿba corre or historical account of the events. sponds to the heart as the seat of the Divine “Presence”, 3. See Y. Moubarac, Abraham in the Quran, coll. Ètudes and the encircling movement of the pilgrims around the musulmanes (Paris: Vrin, 1958). Kaʿba recalls the movement of thoughts or meditations turning perpetually around the soul’s un graspable center. 4. Th ere are forms of monotheism which lie outside Se mitic or Abrahamic lineage. 10. Th e great pilgrimage moves across the Islamic world as the circulation of the blood moves through man’s body, the 5. For all the peoples of antiquity, a stone fallen from the Kaʿba being the heart. sky could not be other than sacred, and necessarily so, for things are what they mean. 11. Th is heritage cropped up occasionally in Europe and, with the Renaissance, finished by engulfing the funda 6. Th is is true also of the “cell” of certain Hindu temples, mentally Christian civilization of the Middle Ages. and this “cell” or matrix ( gharbagriha) has also the shape of a cube. 12. According to al-Azraqī, the author of the oldest his tory of Mecca. Th e icon portrayed the Holy Virgin with 7. St. John’s Apocalypse describes the Heavenly Jerusa lem the Infant on her knees. as an imperishable synthesis of the world in the shape of a cube. 8. Notably in Hinduism and Buddhism, but also in me dieval Christianity, in the form of processions around a saint’s tomb.

“Prologue: The Kaʿ ba” Features in

by Titus Burckhardt, Foreword by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Introduction by Jean-Louis Michon