The Ottoman arcades join the Tawaf too

On the last days of tashriq of the Hajj season, pilgrims spend the night in Mina in order to stone the devils the next day. The posture of the pilgrims, who stay a total of three nights, is in itself a tremendous event. Since Turkish pilgrims generally prefer not to spend the night in Mina in accordance with a fatwa issued by the Diyanet, at least at night they are not here.

Turkish pilgrims generally come to Mina from the hotels where they are staying, from the time of the afternoon prayer, to stone the devils, and leave this area immediately. Yet the rest of the Islamic countries stay here because they count our Prophet's spending the night in Mina among the obligatory acts (wajibat) of the Hajj. But staying here is a trouble in itself. Because the places where tents are pitched cannot accommodate all the pilgrims.

People lie down and sleep on sidewalks, on median strips, on hills, and on mats they spread out even to nearly half of the road. At first glance, because people have no houses or hotels to stay in, they present an image of misery in their homeless, destitute state. Toward the end of the three days, the fatigue that settles on people and the wearing out of clothes reinforce the image of misery. Yet each of those staying this way is a person well enough off to find a way here from his own country. Toward the later hours of the night, there is no question of proper rest for those who lay their bodies, heavy as lead, on the ground. This hardship, borne out of love for following the Sunnah of the Prophet, is, from whichever side you look, a magnificent love story.

At some hour of the night, the state of the people sleeping under pure white sheets resembles the sight of a cemetery. Erkan Tan from TV 8 likens the people slowly stretching their bodies and trying to wake up toward morning, from this cemetery-like sight, to rising resurrected from a grave. And this is a very fitting simile for an experience that is already a rehearsal of the Day of Gathering.

We too, after the second stoning of the devils, without waiting for the 3rd day of tashriq, arrive in Mecca, the mother of cities (Umm al-Qura), to perform the farewell tawaf. Those who wish may wait for the 3rd day, stone for the last time, and leave that way. Many people, without waiting for the third day, rush to the farewell tawaf as one of the rites of the Hajj. This turns the Masjid al-Haram into a place where an enormous crowd gathers. A crowd so dense that a needle thrown would not fall to the ground fills it, despite all the expansion works, making even taking a step extremely difficult from the very outer edge of its outer courtyard. Even if one barely enters the Mosque, reaching the Kaaba is almost impossible. The tawaf has spilled over to where the porticoes are. But this place both lengthens the tawaf considerably and is insufficient for the crowd. Then the tawaf goes up to the upper floors, and there too there is nearly the same crowd. What sort of devotion, what sort of crowd of the Gathering, O Lord!

Meanwhile we recall the debate about the removal of the Porticoes built by the Ottomans. It has come up this year too. An important segment in Turkey attributes this to the Saudis' intention of erasing the traces of the Ottomans. This is a very great injustice. Everyone who attempts this tawaf sees with certainty how great an injustice this is, and how great a need the expansion of the Kaaba is. What is actually extremely wrong is trying to preserve the porticoes, which today have no architectural function left, merely as an Ottoman memento, at the cost of leaving millions of people performing tawaf under torment.

That everyone who undergoes this torment here should begin to think that they endure it because of these porticoes seems, in fact, a great disrespect to the Ottoman memory. Because, while the Ottomans, who in their time rendered the most beneficial servanthood to the Kaaba, had service as their sole purpose, for all pilgrims today to endure this torment for the sake of preserving the Ottoman signature placed on the House of God is something that cannot be reconciled with the wisdom of being the servant of the Two Holy Mosques. While the Ottomans regarded serving the Masjid al-Haram as their reason for existence, they would surely never have thought of having themselves served in this way, in a sense. The pilgrims, who in any case fulfill the obligations of the Hajj with a thousand and one hardships, are also tormented on top of that because of the porticoes. In this state they are practically serving the Ottomans too. This is no different from raising another symbol (shi'ar) before the Owner of the House, to whom everyone should bow in respect. From the standpoint of tawhid, too, this is a very problematic situation.

That is why I think that Prof. Saim Yeprem, Chairman of the Board of the Diyanet Foundation, approaches the matter in a healthier way. "The decision to demolish the Ottoman porticoes at the Kaaba because of expansion works has no religious dimension. I think the aim here is not the erasure of the Ottomans' traces but the prevention of the crush of hundreds of thousands of people at the Hajj and the provision of a more comfortable opportunity for worship. Although in the past the Saudi officials did not treat the Ottoman heritage well, I think this decision stems from a necessity. Moreover, Kanuni himself had built these porticoes entirely for the purpose of expanding the tawaf area in that period."

In an earlier article titled "The Tawaf of History and Change," I had pointed to the drawbacks of excessive historical sensitivity in the presence of the Kaaba. Indeed, in the face of the expansion effort brought about by the ever-increasing interest in the Kaaba, we see that both history and change make us live, through a kind of tawaf, the experience of annihilation before the existence of God. Never mind the Ottoman heritage: of the traces that the Prophet and the following generations left around the Haram, in the streets of Mecca, there is no trace left now. All that remains is that miraculous Kaaba and the symbols of God (Safa-Marwa) and the unchanging rites of the masses taking part in this tawaf and sa'y.

The Ottoman Porticoes, which rendered their services in abundance in their time, will also have joined this tawaf of history, just as everyone and everything eventually joins and will join. Thus they will have announced that all that will remain is the face of the Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Honor.