Mecca: The Sacred City

As an urban designer, a historian, a leading intellectual, and a man who has always loved his mother's faith, Sardar is almost uniquely qualified to evaluate the history, the cultural life, and the urban landscape of Mecca. Starting with the earliest records and myths of this particular place, he traces the evolution of politics, architecture, community and ideology, down to a brutally honest assessment of the city as it stands today. I must quote part of it: "Mecca today is a microcosm of its own history replayed as tragedy. The city that has been remade in the image of the wealth and imperial splendour of whatever power was dominant is the plaything of its latest masters -- who happen on this occasion to be lacking any aesthetic sensitivity, so that the underlying theme of naked power and wealth-driven consumer excess is brazenly exposed for all to see, devoid of saving graces."<br /><br />This detailed tale of lives through the centuries, neighbourhoods, symbols or dreams raises driving questions about what Mecca is used for, what it means, and which aspects of its vast heritage will prevail in the future.

This is about Mecca/ Makkah/ Baca/Bakkah as a place and a spiritual place. Some will wonder how all the centuries of history can be put in a book of just over 4oo pages. Well Ziauddin Sardar did it. He grew up with the sight of Mecca in his mind and he got to go to the holy city five times. The history one could say he puts into the book is only a dusting of the events of the long period of the Kaaba's existence. It is a very enjoyable read and fascinating. So what is the future of Mecca? To know it's past, present and future one would have to find its soul. The soul of Mecca is in each person, whether Muslim and maybe for some surprisingly non-Muslim alike. For most religions if not perhaps all religions (paganism is not really a religion) is a common theme. It may seem simple but it's not. Charlie Chaplin once said the Kingdom of God was in each of us. He wasn't a religious person, he was agnostic, perhaps atheist, however, his beliefs he was right. In each of us as Oscar Wilde said our own heaven and hell and from that our own god, in whatever way we wish to manifest god. People go on searches for god. Indeed the pilgrims to Mecca are searching for a closer connection to their Allah and still others will go on spiritual journeys looking for god. There is no obvious place that god dwells except within the faithful's heart. Quite a few atheists will go out of their way to vigorously dismiss the notion of god. Many cry that with all of the world's woes that occur is proof that there is no god. That somehow the idea of a god is a fixer for all our cruelties and stupidity we inflict on the earth and as such we can just keep repeating this because some upstairs parent will sigh tidy up our messes and leave appropriately afterwards. I am no advocate for saying the innocent people of something like Hurricane Katrina or millions of orphans being born must have committed some sin in the past and are paying for it in this life. For we all know that Hurricane Katrina was no act of god and the millions of orphans in the world is not part of some mystical plan of god's either. We are responsible for all of that. Any atheist would say we, as mortals, have the power to create life and take it away. The universe and all in it was created by gases and we have universes within universes, not made by an obvious white bearded guy in the sky. In the few places where god has been shown as something or described, god is seen as separate from us and predominately male but looks to be human. As this book shows people are desperate for symbols. Before Islam became what we know of in history the people of Mecca had statues to their gods and goddesses. None of the people had actually ever seen them but they fashioned into stone, wood or precious metals symbols of their gods/goddesses and so it was the world over. Many cultures didn't have their gods/goddesses living in some remote part of the sky, theirs resided on the ground or in water. We look for symbols constantly to find answers to questions we can't really begin to ask. These symbols give us no answers. Symbols are guides, however, like most guides are often misleading. In modern life we have gone back to the old god of Money. We trail after it all our lives for one reason after another. What keeps us asking for the meaning of life? What keeps Ziauddin Sardar believing in the holiness of Mecca despite what is happening to it? The answer is in the book and within ourselves.

Ziauddin's work has always been a delight to read. The first of his work I read was way back 20 odd years ago, a book called 'Desperately Seeking Paradise.<br />This book, Mecca, the Sacred City is a compilation of Mecca's history, a rather all encompassing work, in my opinion. The subject being historical can be rather dry if not properly handled, but I find myself breezing through the book like a novel.<br /><br />Ziauddin started the book with a narration about his fifth Hajj; done in Ibn Battutta style, or rather an attempt at Hajj in the style of Ibn Battutta, complete with beast of burden in the form of Genjiz the homosexual donkey.<br /><br />He then recounts the story of Mecca, year by year starting even before the Prophets Muhammad's time; for those who went to Islamic studies will remember Abrahah and his merry men on elephants who attacked Mecca; and all the way to the recent time complete with the photo of Mecca as a tiny dot of a cube when imposed against the giant clock tower that is the Zamzam tower. Ziauddin is not overly melancholic with Mecca as us Muslims have a tendency to be. He took it as a subject and tried to be as complete as possible with the topic describing the environment and citizens of the city at each period.<br /><br />Many would have been misled with the false assumption that Mecca is a serene and religious place. After all that is all we know of Mecca. The reigning government has attempted to erase, and has been quite successful with reimagining Mecca as a serene place, a place muslims go to to carry out our pilgrimage because it is the 5th pillar of our islamic faith. Little do we know that over the centuries, Mecca had continued to be bathed in blood due to war and treacheries and the visitors to the place be it traders of pilgrims are badly treated, robbed , cursed by its citizens unfitting of a so called holy place.<br /><br />Is Ziauddin making a mountain out of a mole hill? No. It is true. Prior to my arrival in Mecca 1.5 years ago, the group i was travelling with were warned by the Muttawif, our guide, to be aware of our surroundings because thieves and robbers abound. To be warned of pick pockets where tourist tend to be is pretty normal, but robbed in broad daylight? in a holy city? There was certainly something wrong with the picture which was clearly answered in this book.<br /><br />I have earmarked numerous sections of the book so i will remember to highlight the stories i wanted to share here at Goodreads. But there are so many earmarks that I will just be rewriting the book instead of reviewing it.<br />To those interested in the subject, I highly recommend this very readable book. I also highly recommend this book to all muslims who has blindly accepted their faith in Mecca without understanding the reason for why it is such a 'holy' place. The Hajj at best is a pagan practice, having its origins way before the time of Muhammad. and Mecca is now fast growing, looking more and more not like Houston, (Houston! of all place, can you imagine that) the place it was intended to emulate (the Saud wanted it to look like the other oil city), but more and more like Dubai, a place of excesses and the only religion you will find there is the religion of money.

Sardar has written an easy to read and easy to follow book about the history of Mecca. The pre-Islamic section is based on whatever legends and outsider accounts have come down to us and Sardar is not very skeptical about any of them as long as they support the mainstream Islamic mythology about Mecca and its origins. The reader can make up his or her own mind about how reliable or unreliable the various accounts are, but they are all interesting and fun to read. And they depict a pre-Islamic Mecca that seems more like New Orleans at carnival time, which may or may not be a good thing depending on the reader's preferences. <br />The Islamic section is more detailed and the long period between the Abbasids and the later Ottomans was mostly new information for me. The overall framework is mainstream "moderate" Sunni, but you will learn new things even if you do not share Sardar's particular Pakistani-British prejudices. Meccan poetry contests and the Meccan music scene may surprise readers who have only seen the Wahabi-ized Mecca of the last century or so. <br />Worth a read, mostly because you won't find this much Mecca-related lore in one place in an easy to read book. But if you are looking for a very serious scholarly work, keep looking..

Fascinating, Informative &amp; Beautifully Written! An Excellent Read! I Loved It!

For my fellow Muslims - a must read without a doubt. An engrossing, enthralling history of a place we all hold dear, whether we have walked within it's walls or not (I am of the latter at this writing). <br /><br />While I had known about a few of the events in the history Makkah, the author creates a comprehensive and in-depth look at all the ups and downs that the Holy City suffered through in it's complicated life. Honestly, I had not known of the heavy bloodshed and violence within the confines of the mosque itself that it had witnessed at nearly every period. Additionally, things that we cannot even imagine or wouldn't wish to occur in the vicinity of Makkah, not to mention near the Kaaba itself, did in fact, occur. <br /><br />Despite all this - it is a truly fascinating history - though many of us hold Makkah in a very high regard, it was subject to all the same human influence that any other city deals with to this day. At first it seems alien (or at least I wanted it to be), yet it's unavoidable of course -from the native Meccans, Muslims from the surrounding areas or rulers (e.g. the Ottomans) meant to preserve and protect it, to outsiders who passed through. <br /><br />As the informed reader will likely deduce concerning the contemporary Makkah, the author is quite harsh about where he sees Makkah as it was, where it is today and where he sees it going, after having worked at the Hajj Research Centre and finding much resistance from the powers that be; indeed there is a fair share of Royal-family bashing, which is quite popular among the Muslim population these days, but to the author, the issue is clearly bigger than this - it is more about the microcosm of Makkah as a reflection of the state of Islam and Muslims as a whole.<br /><br />The author leaves us with a hopeful thought and assertion: that we will all find the true Makkah which he momentarily witnessed, which in essence, has never and will never, fade. Let us hope this is true.

<b>Why I'm interested in this book at the first place </b><br />This book was featured in Kinokuniya's #yournextgoodread Instagram post <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/B1QiilUJUYp/?igshid=zsp3y0gcfzma" rel="nofollow noopener">(link)</a>, and I also love all things historical, so why not?<br /><br /><b>What do I think of this book... now that I've done reading it </b><br />Yes, whilst this book talks about the history of Mecca, the author had expand it to the scope of the evolution on both architectural and people that resides in it. <br />He narrates it in an interesting way.<br /><br /><b>+</b><br />1. I love Sardar's writing style. It's like having a friend who is an expert on a subject and tells it as it is; and yet does not project the stereotypical intellectual superiority that will end up making the readers confused. <br />2. There is a chronology section at the end of book that records important events that took place.<br />3. The pictorial section, exhibits Mecca in paintings as well as in different timespace.<br /><br /><b>-</b><br />1. There are no dedicated pictorial section specifically on the architectural (chronological) evolution of Mecca. Yes, I do understand it might close to impossible to have the details documented from the earliest design - the information could be lost in time, or probably the access of the information only available to selected few.<br /><br /><b>Get this</b><br />1. If you're a history junkie.<br />2. If you're always fascinated with the subject of Mecca and looking for a reading material to start out with.<br />3. Seen/Fan of the travel-documentary series Jejak Rasul.<br />4. If you want to add a non-fiction book to your reading list.

"The function of the Kaaba, a cuboid structure made of brick and mortar and draped in black cloth, is to provide Muslims with a sense of direction. Wherever they may be on God's benevolent earth, Muslims turn towards the Kaaba during their five daily prayers. They walk around it seven times when they are performing the Hajj, or Umra the lesser pilgrimage. It is a symbol, a sign of direction for Muslim to turn towards and inculcate a sense of unity amongst themselves.<br /><br /> Within the Kaaba, there is no sense of direction and hence no purpose. That is why it is empty. To be inside the Kaaba is to lose all sense of direction and purpose."<br /><br />This was definitely beautifully written. I cannot imagine the effort, the research, the planning and everything into writing this book. I thought I dive into this book with knowing what to expect but now I discover many histories of what I do now know of the history of Makkah. <br /><br /><br /><br />"Nevertheless, my last best hope for myself and everyone is to know the timeless peace of Mecca I met in the eyes of one old man, the Pakistani peasant who had come to the Holy Cit to die. For believers like him, Mecca is a place of eternal harmony, and something worth living for and striving to attain. It has always been And it will always be."

Interesting and informative. Traces the history of the city from barren land to current period. <br /><br />The last chapter of the book is close to my heart where writer talks about commercialized structures (5-7 stars hotels) surrounding Kaaba affecting spiritual journeys making pilgrimage sounds like a picnic.

Insightful and amazing! An absorbing read by one of my favourite scholars on Islam.