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A Season in Mecca: Narrative of a Pilgrimage, by Abdellah Hammoudi
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An unforgettable report on one man's hajj--the sacred rite that brings millions of Muslims to Mecca every year In 1999, the Moroccan scholar Abdellah Hammoudi, trained in Paris and teaching in America, decided to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca. He wanted to observe the hajj as an anthropologist but also to experience it as an ordinary pilgrim, and to write about it for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Here is his intimate, intense, and detailed account of the Hajj--a rare and important document by a subtle, learned, and sympathetic writer. Hammoudi describes not just the adventure, the human pressures, and the social tumult--everything from the early preparations to the last climactic scenes in the holy shrines of Medina and Mecca--but also the intricate politics and amazing complexity of the entire pilgrimage experience. He pays special heed to the effects of Saudi bureaucratic control over the Hajj, to the ways that faith itself becomes a lucrative source of commerce for the Arabian kingdom, and to the Wahhabi inflections of the basic Muslim message. Here, too, is a poignant discussion of the inner voyage that pilgrimage can mean to those who embark on it: the transformed sense of daily life, of worship, and of political engagement. Hammoudi acknowledges that he was spurred to reconsider his own ideas about faith, gesture, community, and nationality in unanticipated ways. This is a remarkable work of literature about both the outer forms and the inner meanings of Islam today.
- Sales Rank: #1438268 in Books
- Brand: Brand: Hill and Wang
- Published on: 2006-01-10
- Released on: 2006-01-10
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.46" h x 1.06" w x 5.76" l, .97 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 304 pages
- Used Book in Good Condition
From Publishers Weekly
Hammoudi, a Paris-educated professor of anthropology at Princeton University, brings his worldly experiences to the most personal of journeys: the Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca (called the hajj in Arabic). Originally written in French, this English edition is being published to coincide with the 2006 hajj. Hammoudi is eager to explore the academic angles of the hajj, all the while doubting the strength of his own faith. He is constantly tested. First, he must bribe a mid-level government official in his native Morocco several times simply to be added to the country's quota list of pilgrims. Upon arrival in Medina, the city of the Prophet Muhammad, Hammoudi is stunned by the omnipresent markets hawking everything from rugs to suitcases. Still struggling for a religious experience, Hammoudi is angered by the Wahhabi stewards of Mecca and Medina, who police Islam's holiest sites with irrational Wahhabi zeal. Beset with the flu, Hammoudi still circumambulates the Kaaba in Mecca, appreciating the rare absence of gender segregation. Ghazaleh's translation is reminiscent of both French eloquence and Moroccan storytelling. At times, Hammoudi's intellectualism becomes too abstract to follow, but even such abstraction further adds to the mystical, almost surreal, journey. (Jan. 7)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Hammoudi is a Princeton anthropologist whose previous work examined deeply rooted structures of authoritarian rule in Moroccan daily life through a highly accessible, if undeniably Foucauldian, lens. Here, he retains his focus on the profound minutiae of power structures as he examines the hajj, the highly ritualized journey to Mecca required of all Muslims. At least initially, Hammoudi approaches the Fifth Pillar as an academic outsider, fascinated by the rituals of pilgrims and the bureaucracies built around piety but privately conscious of his inability to dedicate himself to only one truth. Yet, without abandoning his academic wisdom--the source of much insightful analysis, particularly about the obstructive and instructive role played by national identity in a ritual celebrating religious unity--Hammoudi cannot stop the circumambulations at Mecca from awakening in him an understanding that does not easily translate into anthropological categories. It's not exactly a conversion story, but it is a tale of transformation. Hammoudi's deeply personal plunge into the subtleties of the sacred and the profane will interest many readers and perhaps inspire some as well. Brendan Driscoll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
Review
"[A] moving and sometimes painful book . . . Mr. Hammoudi infuses this social and personal drama with meditations on ritual, travel, family, state power and the ceaseless desire for global communion, aspects of religious life that have guided the footsteps of pilgrims of all faiths since ancient Egypt. His is a book of surpassing intelligence, humor, sadness and grace." --Richard B. Woodward, New York Times
"[Hammoudi's] observations offer readers an intimate, insider's account of the minutiae of a hajj, particularly intriguing for those of us who will never be able to come any closer. Equally engaging are the moments when the anthropologist disappears and Hammoudi surrenders to feeling he can't explain." --Marjorie Kehe, The Christian Science Monitor
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
A Unique View of the Pilgrimage
By Rob Hardy
In 1853, Sir Richard Francis Burton went on the pilgrimage (hajj) to Mecca, and his wonderful account of his successful impersonation as a Muslim pilgrim is still an exciting book. There have been other non-Muslims and Muslims who have written about the travel, which is one of the five pillars of Islam (the others being profession of faith, prayer, fasting, and alms giving). All Muslims who are able are obligated to take the hajj once in their lives. There are few modern accounts of the pilgrimage, which has become commercialized and, for those who have the money, routine. Now there is a unique account, from Abdellah Hammoudi, a professor of anthropology at Princeton University, who determined that he would undertake the hajj in 1999 for the purpose of writing a book on anthropological aspects of his trip. Any pilgrim has a journey unlike any other pilgrim, but Hammoudi's effort, chronicled in _A Season in Mecca: Narrative of a Pilgrimage_ (Hill and Wang) is distinct. He is not a believer like his other fellow pilgrims, even the friends he goes with. "I am not contemptuous of religions; I believe that under certain conditions they allow for expression of major existential dilemmas and encourage reconciliation on a grand scale." He grew up in Morocco, and was raised as a Muslim, which he says he still is, but a secular one. And so his journey set up conflicts from the start that he analyzes scrupulously at length, and which never really become resolved: "I couldn't possibly be an observer plain and simple, whether hostile and distant or friendly and admiring of Islam." He also had constantly to analyze his own participation in the ritual; can anthropologists rightly study cultures in which they are themselves taking part? Can the hajj have any value if undertaken in a secular vein?
These questions, and those having to do with the basic personal meaning of the hajj, will perhaps be less interesting for most readers than the stories of preparation and the travelogue of the journey, told with good humor in a readable translation from the French (by Pascale Ghazaleh). For instance, Hammoudi had to submit thirty passport-style photographs and six copies of his birth certificate. He had to fill out a file on himself, and had to enlist the help of someone who knew someone. Of course, just filling in the forms would not do; he had to give a sum of money to a government employee ("which we decided to call `alms'") in order to lubricate the process. Once he was fully registered, he could not simply pack up and go. He had to be trained into what he was about to undergo, for violation of minor rules would invalidate the hajj and make it as if he had never participated at all. There were constant conflicts with commerce. One of Hammoudi's fellow pilgrims even says that the hajj is "a merchants' conspiracy." There is an obsession with purchasing suitcases, suitcases that will hold other purchases that are brought back home from the hajj, souvenirs for those left behind. The commercial aspects of the hajj were only one of the disappointments Hammoudi had to face. He was continually confronted with the segregation from women, which is stricter in Saudi Arabia than in his Moroccan home. Pilgrims were eager to criticize others; one pious man pointed out, "Our neighbors prayed behind our women. Their prayer is invalid." Hammoudi is disgusted by those who declare themselves the ones who have an absolute right to interpret the prophet's words for others. He is dismayed by the obvious differences between Shiites and Sunnis and the Wahhabi brand of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia.
It sounds a troublesome way to take a vacation, indeed. Hammoudi was, however, not just moved by the sad events that gives his narrative an overall "Ship of Fools" tone. There are surges of joy he describes, such as when he visits Mohammed's tomb. He describes the circling crowd at the Kaaba and being overcome with emotion and tears, and is willing to leave behind any negative lessons he has learned. "Now I understood the meaning of certain statements I had often heard: `What happiness to be here! How good God's grace is... What joy one feels at seeing all this!" Many of the pages of _A Season in Mecca_ have to do with an intellectual's attempts to come to an objective understanding of the many strange events which compose a hajj, but the subjectivity and ineffability of faith keep breaking through.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful.
When its good, it's very good...
By Loves the View
The description of navigating the Moroccan kleptocracy to get one of the visas alloted to the county is an example of Hammoudi's excellent narrative capability. Other highlights are his descriptions of the intimidating preparatory classes, the shopping sprees, an animal sacrifice, the oversold busses with the blaring religious tapes, the people he meets, the failings of tour operators and the pilgrims' reactions to them and the petty bureaucracy he encountered upon trying to leave Saudi Arabia.
Not all the descriptions, though, are up to this level. For instance, I couldn't envision the run between Safi and Marwa, including the "gallery" over the path. (bleachers for watching? a place with religious art?) Are there hundreds bunched the way marathons start, or in small clusters? What of the woman who cuts the lock of his hair afterward? (Can anyone just reach out and cut anyone's hair or is it arranged?) I didn't fully understand the lodgings (esp. with his gender mixed group). He does mention an air conditioned tent, but what of the other places? Motels? Temporary trailers? How did they (the women, that is) cook in them (stoves? bunsen burners?) and what of these rest rooms (down the hall? 1 for X number people? showers?) that they lined up to use?
Hammoudi is sensitive to the very second class status of women. They have all the same religious obligations as the men and have to cook too. They pray in a padlocked area. Some of the instances beg for more. For instance, he says some the women were sick because of the pills they had taken to stop menstruating (they did not want to be unclean in holy places). This is all that is written on this.
The major shortcoming, however, is Hammoudi's tendency to over-intellectualize. Much of this relates to his feelings of being an outsider. A lot of it I just couldn't follow.
Despite these limitations (and that this Hajj is in 1999), this is an insider's look at the pilgrimage, without any idealization or fluff. Hammoudi calls it as he sees it with refreshing honesty about his beliefs and feelings.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful.
I'm not going to do the book justice
By Ayman
I'm writing this review knowing that I'm not going to do the book justice. The number one reason is that I'm far too removed from academia now and far too pressed for time to be able to follow closely and read and reread each passage. The second reason is that I read the first 141 pages more than a year before finishing the rest of the book.
When I started reading the book, I was turned off by what I saw as the author's complaining about the endemic corruption of the developing world, similar to the WAWA (West Africa Wins Again) of U.S. travelogs in west Africa. The author's mentioning his disregard for ritual requirements and prohibitions and his lack of reverence for the blessing of Allah's invitation to His house pained me. And I just stopped reading the book.
But from page 142 on, and I don't know if I'm imagining it, it was as if I was reading a totally different book. The participation in the rituals of ziyara, umra and hajj, no matter how "defective" the author's intention, changed the tone of the narrative. It was as if the magnitude of the crowds, the power of the stories the rituals reenacted, the landscape, the buildings, the sounds and the words of the Quran flooded over the dam of the author's preconceived research plan. But this flood was not destructive. Rather, the water initiated the germination of the seeds of Muslim identity lying in a soil enriched, not polluted, by the European-American discipline of anthropology.
Now I may still be on a post Eid al-Fitr high, and I have to say just thinking about Makka is enough to make me cry (even this instant!)-May Allah azza wa jall invite us all there!-but I thought this author made me as a Muslim think about the hajj in ways I had not considered. And is there worship better than pondering Allah's signs in His messengers and His judgments?
For the non-Muslim reader, I hope that the latter half of the book will bring attention to Islam as a religion rather than as a political movement.
This book has by far the best description of the replacement and sacrifice of Ibrahim, Hajar and Ismail alayhim assalaam that I've read. In my brief Internet search, I came across a good article by Carol Delaney's Was Abraham Ethical? Should We Admire His Willingness to Sacrifice His Son? But Professor's Abdellah's discussion is at a whole other level.
The book reminds me a lot of the only other "deep" anthropology book I've ever read, Paths Toward a Clearing by Michael Jackson. I have to read these kinds of books repeatedly to find their rhythm. If you have the time, it's well worth it.
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