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From Drury Lane
to Makka
Abdal-Hakim Murad recounts the tale of
artist, Hedley Churchward, who in 1910 became the first
confirmed British convert to Islam to make the Hajj pilgrimage.
History has not recorded the name
of the first British Muslim to carry out the rites of Hajj. Rumours abound of
converted Crusaders who made the trip in medieval times, and of British Muslims
in Ottoman naval service who visited the hallowed precincts in the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries. But the first detailed account of the Hajj by an
English Muslim had to wait until the Edwardian era, when the artist Hedley
Churchward became the first recorded British ‘Guest of God.’
Like many Anglo-Muslims of his
day, Churchward was the conservative, gentlemanly scion of an ancient family;
indeed, his ancestors possessed the second oldest house in Britain. His father
ran a successful business in Aldershot, and was well-received in regimental
circles, enabling the young Churchward to meet Queen Victoria and the
philanthropist Baroness Burdett-Coutts. Showing an early artistic talent,
Churchward studied art and became a recognised painter, specialising in the then
highly prestigious field of theatrical scene painting. A familiar figure in
London’s West End in the 1880s, he worked closely with celebrities as varied as
Tennyson, Millais, Lord Leighton, and the most famous of all Victorian
‘supermodels’, Lily Langtry.
A leisurely trip through Spain
opened the young scene-painter’s eyes to the glories of Moorish architecture,
and he was tempted to venture across the Straits to Morocco. Here, in a world
still untouched by Western influence, he quickly fell in love with the gentle
and beautiful lifestyle of Islam. After several visits, he gravely announced to
his startled family that he had become a Muslim.
Churchward travelled on to Cairo,
where he studied for several years at Al-Azhar, the Muslim world’s highest seat
of learning. His scholarship developed apace, enabling him to preach Friday
sermons at a small mosque, and even landing him an appointment to the
prestigious post of lecturer in Sira (the Prophet’s biography) at the Qadis’
Academy - no small achievement for a convert.
In need of more lucrative work,
Churchward then sailed for South Africa, where his art and his elegant
drawing-room manner soon won him the favour of Cecil Rhodes, who made him the
gift of a rare pink diamond. Moving effortlessly between the Muslim community
and the Transvaal’s white elite, it was thanks to Churchward’s earnest
intercession that President Paul Kruger granted permission for the erection of
the first mosque in the Witwatersrand goldfields.
On his return to Cairo, Mahmoud
Churchward married the daughter of a prominent Shafi‘i jurist of Al-Azhar, and
continued his Arabic lecturing. But both his head and his heart told him that
his Islam was not yet complete: the magnetic pull of the Fifth Pillar was
becoming impossible to resist. As he later recorded: ‘One evening, as I strode
along the looming Pyramid in the sunset, and saw the jagged skyline of Cairo
behind the dreamy African dusk, I decided to carry through what I had intended
to do ever since I turned a Moslem - I would go to the Kaaba at Mecca.’
As an Englishman he realised that
this ambition might prove hard to fulfil: there was a danger that the Caliphal
authorities at Jeddah might distrust the sincerity of his claims to be a Muslim,
and unceremoniously turn him away. He therefore petitioned the senior Ulema for
a letter of recommendation. In the awe-inspiring presence of the Chief Qadi of
Egypt, together with Shaykh al-Islam Mehmet Jemaluddin Efendi (the Ottoman
Empire’s highest religious authority, who happened to be on a visit to Cairo),
he submitted to a three-hour examination on difficult points of faith. Passing
with flying colours, he received a beautifully-calligraphed testimonial signed
by the scholars present. This religious passport was to serve him well in
overcoming the bureaucratic obstacles which lay ahead.
In 1910, after a further year in
South Africa, the would-be Hajji packed his trunks and set out from Johannesburg
for Arabia. Steamers in those days were slow, and Churchward faced the added
impediment of having to travel via Bombay, where he spent weeks in frustrating
negotiations with shipping-clerks, officials, and an urbane Lebanese Christian
who was the Ottoman consul. At last he found an elderly pilgrim ship, the SS
Islamic, and this vessel, captained by an irascible Scotsman and armed with
cannon against the threat of pirates, chugged slowly across the shimmering heat
of the Indian Ocean, visiting the poverty-stricken Arabian Gulf before wending
its leisurely way up the Red Sea.
The days passed slowly, and the
time for Hajj was fast approaching. Steaming at six knots, halting at small
ports to deliver sacks of mail, which had to be handed over with six-foot tongs
because of the fear of plague, there was little to do except watch the dolphins,
eat curry, and pray on deck with the Indian pilgrims.
Landing briefly at the Sudanese
port of Suakin, Churchward dropped in on the British Consul, who airily told him
that his plans to visit Makka were doomed. ‘My dear chap,’ he told him, sipping
an iced drink on the Consular veranda, ‘to begin with you will not be allowed to
land at Jeddah.’
But two days later, the Islamic
steamed into the roadstead of the Arabian port. ‘On the Indian deck,’ he
recorded, ‘there started a great packing of pots, portable stoves, babies and
sacks of rice.’ It proved necessary to row ashore in a small dinghy, plunging
through the hot spray past a Turkish battleship that had been moored for so long
that the coral had grown up around it, immobilising it forever. Once his little
boat was beached on the sands, a short conversation with the Ottoman officials
established that all was well, and Churchward went into the town to make contact
with the local representative (wakil) of Sharifa Zain Wali, a rich businesswoman
of Makka who ran a large organisation of ‘mutawwifs’ - pilgrim guides.
Naturally, she could not attend him here in person - as Churchward later
observed: ‘Owing to the immense numbers of pilgrims, hundreds of thousands, who
reach Jeddah each year, it is as impossible for these much-respected dignitaries
to escort their customers personally as it would be for Mr. Thomas Cook to
chaperone every Cockney globe-trotter through Europe. Like all her colleagues,
she employed a considerable staff, who saw that the Hajis carried through the
ritual prescribed by the Prophet.’
The Wakil took Churchward to his
beautiful Arab house, and explained how to don his Ihram clothing before letting
him settle down for the night. ‘Finding a level place on the irregular stones I
lay down anew’, he wrote. ‘This time a thousand million mosquitoes hovered over
me.’ The following day, he telegraphed most of his money through to Makka, and
entrusted, as was the custom, the remainder of his funds to the Mutawwif. That
evening, ‘while the lamps of Jeddah glowed in a tropic sunset, two donkeys
arrived.’ The road beyond Jeddah was little more than a camel track, but the
Wakil confidently led the small party towards the nocturnal east, with Halley’s
Comet hanging splendidly among the stars above. ‘Against the stars I saw rock
faces; we seemed to be trotting through a kind of canyon. Saving the fall of our
donkeys’ feet there was nothing to be heard, not even a jackal. ... Bang!
Explosions suddenly rang from some place high in the dark hills. No mistake,
those were rifle shots ... The growing brightness showed a very picturesque old
building, a kind of tower several hundred feet above the road. From the steep
path serving the structure some fez-adorned figures ran down. They wore uniforms
and held guns in their hands.’
An Ottoman officer came up, and
politely explained that his men had successfully chased off a band of robbers.
In those days, attacks by desert Arabs on pilgrims were distressingly common;
but Churchward and his party rode on, trusting in God. In the oven-like heat of
the early afternoon, after several stops at roadside coffee-houses, they passed
the stone pillars which indicated the beginning of the sacred territory into
which no non-Muslim may intrude.
‘On entering here my guide signed
to me that we should say the proper prayer. Touching his heart and forehead he
muttered the Fatiha and held his hands together as if to receive Heaven’s
blessing. Then he said, Hena al-Haram (Here is the Holy Ground).’
‘Some pigeons, wild doves and
other birds were the first specimens of desert fauna I came on. They appeared
perfectly tame, and fluttered a few inches from our faces. Some sat on the hard
stones and allowed the donkeys to go right upon them. Very carefully the Wakeel
led his beast around the little creatures, for no man will dare to kill a living
thing here.’
In the Holy City at last, after
almost two days on the road, Churchward and his companions entered the tall
mansion-cum-hotel of the Sharifa. This pious and aristocratic lady, a
direct descendent of the Holy Prophet, had family connections in Cape Town,
where her company of pilgrim guides had been recommended to Churchward.
Unpacking his goods, he sent her a gift of a Gouda cheese, which was borne up to
her unseen presence by excited servants. The Sharifa herself shortly
called to him from behind a wooden mashrabiya screen: ‘Mubarak! Welcome to my
house.’ ‘I replied that I felt proud to live in her house, whereat she answered
that she was proud of me. ‘The Kafirs make good cheese,’ declared the lady,
‘they must have many cows.’’
The English pilgrim struggled up
seven flights of stairs, bathed, and slept on the roof. He was awoken before
dawn by the strange lilting sound of Ottoman bugles, and after prayers and a
breakfast of melons he set off behind the Mutawwif towards the Sacred Mosque.
Taking care to scuff their feet disdainfully on some well-worn flagstones, which
the Mutawwif declared were some former idols of Quraish which had been cast down
there by the Prophet to be humiliated, Churchward and his companion finally
entered the House of God. The first stage of a five-month journey had finally
come to an end.
©
Abdal-Hakim Murad
British convert to Islam,
Abdal-Hakim Murad, was born in 1960 in London. He was educated Cambridge
University (MA Arabic), and at al-Azhar University, the highest seat of
learning in Sunni Islam. He has studied under traditional Islamic scholars
in Cairo and Jeddah, including Shaykh Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, and Shaykh Ismail
al-Adawi. Abdal-Hakim Murad has translated several classical Arabic works,
including Imam al-Bayhaqi's 'Seventy-Seven Branches of Faith', and 'Selections
from the Fath al-Bari'. He is also
the Trustee and Secretary of The Muslim Academic Trust and
Director of The Anglo-Muslim Fellowship for Eastern Europe.
Read other
articles by Abdal-Hakim Murad on this site here.
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