Adorning the Hajj: Mahmal and Kiswa
Adorning the Hajj: Mahmal and Kiswa
Part 2. Robing the Kaaba as Perpetual Prayer
In Mecca each year, on the 9th day of Dhu al-Hajj, the day of Arafat, a major ritual takes place. The sumptuous cloths which adorn the Kaaba – the Kiswa al-Kab’ah (“Robes of the Kaaba”) - are taken down and replaced by new ones.
In Part I of this article, the long history of the Mahmal and its relationship to the coverings of the Kaaba was described. The Mahmal was a splendid camel-borne palanquin covered in rich silks embroidered with Koranic texts and regal emblems, which led the great annual Hajj pilgrimage caravans organized by the paramount rulers of the day. Each Mahmal – carrying nothing but the Koran - served as the sovereign’s symbolic representative, a visual statement of his authority, his devotion and of his duty to sustain the Holy Cities of the Hijaz. Mahmal also served as ceremonial escorts of the Kiswa and other state gifts annually dedicated to Islam’s holiest shrine.
Prior to Islam, textiles were placed, layer upon layer, on the Kaaba as devotional offerings by the leading Hijaz tribes and noble visitors, a custom continued by the Prophet Muhammad (pbuh) after the Muslim conquest of Mecca in 630. He himself offered a white Kiswa from Yemen, while Caliphs Omar and Uthman offered white Egyptian cloths. Successive caliphs bestowed textiles in a range of other colours until the Abbasid Caliph Al-Nasir (1160-1207) decided that only black would be used and that only a single Kiswa would cover the shrine. The use of a massive black belt (Hizam) to secure the Kiswa drapes was also adopted during this period. In earlier Islamic times, the frequency with which the Kiswa were changed also varied.
The second Caliph Omar ibn al-Khattab (584-644) chose Egypt to supply the Kiswa but subsequent coverings also came from Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere depending on which ruler’s influence was greatest in Mecca. After the Ottoman Turks took control of the Islamic heartlands in 1517, Kiswa production moved from Cairo to Bursa and Istanbul to be transferred back again in 1818 after Mohammed Ali Pasha assumed the rule of Egypt.
Under the Ottomans, two state pilgrimage caravans departed each year, one from Damascus (joined by a caravan from the capital, Istanbul) and the other from Cairo. The Cairene Mahmal’s primary role was to escort the Kiswa to Mecca. A complete set of textiles for the holiest of Islam’s shrines was made in Cairo each year in the state Dar al-Kiswa by hereditary master weavers and embroiderers, who also made and restored Mahmal. In 1913, an English visitor, Simon Henry Leeder, described the reverent atmosphere as its craftsmen undertook their meticulous work “to the melodious voice of a sheikh reading the Koran in a balcony overlooking the courtyard”. As the Bey in charge explained, ‘Ours is the only place under government where the Holy Koran is read. This place is as sacred as a mosque during the time of prayer.”
Then, as today, the Kiswa al-Kabah comprised the following principal textiles, all bearing Koranic and other religious inscriptions and some with the name of the commissioning ruler:
- The Kiswa itself, a set of eight great black woven silk drapes backed with white cotton padding, which cover the Kaaba’s four exterior walls and give the shrine its iconic appearance.
- The Hizam, an embroidered black woven silk belt securing the Kiswa drapes around the upper part of the Kaaba walls.
- The Samadiyya or Kardashiyya, smaller embroidered panels, placed over the Kiswa at on the corners of the Kaaba.
- A tall hanging or curtain over the Kaaba’s single entrance, the Golden Door. Called the Sitara, Burdah or Burqu, it is the most elaborately designed element of the Kiswah al-Kabah.
Two days before the Cairo Hajj caravan was scheduled to leave for Mecca, the newly completed Kiswa textiles and the Mahmal were put on public display. On the day of departure they were exuberantly paraded through the city - preceded by leaders of prominent Sufi tarikats and worthy dignitaries - to the open concourse below the Citadel, Cairo’s centre of rule and administration. There the ruler ritually kissed the leash of the great camel bearing the Mahmal before the procession moved on to join the caravan assembling on Cairo’s outskirts.
Arriving in Mecca after a 35-40 day journey, the Mahmal and Kiswa passed through welcoming throngs of residents and pilgrims to the home of the hereditary Keeper of the Key of the Kaaba to whom the new Kiswa was presented. On the 9th day of Dhu al-Hajj they were taken to the Kaaba where the coverings in place since the previous Hajj were removed and replaced by the new ones. On that holy day, the Cairo and Damascus Mahmal represented the sovereign at Arafat and then returned to their respective home cities.
The Kiswa textiles which have been taken down from the Kaaba were disposed of in various ways over the centuries. It is recorded that Omar bin al-Khattab would cut the white Kiswa drapes into pieces for pilgrims to use as shelters against the heat of Mecca. Later pieces were distributed as pilgrimage mementos, as special gifts, or sold. The grand Sitara curtains were replaced each year and were kept by ruling dynasties or bestowed as gifts on prominent Muslims. The Kiswa belts, Hizam, were similarly treasured and were sometimes returned to the workshops that had made them for repair and re-use.
Following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, which allowed pilgrims from the north and west of the Islamic world affordable and convenient access by steamship to the Hijaz, the number travelling by caravan from Cairo dwindled dramatically: by the late 19th century only the Mahmal and Kiswa and their escort went by the overland route. Following the construction of a railway between Cairo and the port of Suez, the Mahmal and Kiswa were sent by rail to Suez and then shipped to Jeddah. From there they continued on by traditional camel caravan to Mecca.
The traditional customs relating to the Mahmal and the Kiswa were radically affected by the changing political climate in Egypt and Arabia during and after World War I, when Turkey lost control of the Middle East and the Saudis became rulers of their new kingdom. From 1914 to 1926 a complex sequence of events resulted in the Cairo Mahmal and Kiswa no longer being sent to Mecca. In 1927 King Abdul Aziz Bin Saud created a Dar al-Kiswa in Mecca employing Indian master craftsmen, who made the Kiswa until 1937 when the Egyptian and Saudi governments were reconciled. Manufacture of the Kiswa then resumed in Cairo and continued to be sent to Mecca until 1962 when the custom was terminated by the Egyptian president.
The Saudi Dar al-Kiswa re-opened and Kiswa were made there until a large new facility was established in 1977 creating textiles to the highest technical and aesthetic standards. These include those traditionally required for the Kaaba and other places of pilgrimage in the Two Holy Cities as well as carpets, rugs and other fabrics for mosques throughout the kingdom. While still employing meticulous age-old traditional craft techniques, textile manufacture is supported by the latest technologies, e.g. in the dyeing of thread, in the computerization of designs and in weaving.
The tale of Mahmal and Kiswa is a venerable one. Thousands of humble master textile craftsmen throughout Islamic history have devoted themselves to the adornment of the holiest shrine of the faith – their process of creation a journey of perpetual prayer. In the words of a master weaver of the Cairo Kiswa: “To weave the cover for the Holy Kaaba, the centre of the immense world of Islam, the object on which every Muslim hopes his eyes may rest at least once before he dies, and before which he may pray, is the greatest of earthly honours.”
Through their symbolic association with the rituals of the Kiswa and the special intimacy of their physical contact with the holy pilgrimage sites, the Mahmal occupied a very real place in the Muslim heart, as evoked by the English traveler Simon Leeder with great poignancy: “I can never forget a scene near the Mahmal near Abbassieh, where the pilgrimage is eventually organized for its actual start to Mecca. A number of poor women, whose accent told that they had come the long journey from Upper Egypt in Luxor, were sitting in a close group on the ground, as near to the Mahmal as possible, singing very sweetly a song of the Pilgrimage. The Lord had denied them to pray in Mecca, but they were not left altogether desolate, for their eyes were rejoiced to see the blessed Mahmal. For this they had come specially so many miles, the only journey they could afford in their lives and their constantly reiterated prayer was that God would grant them some of the merits of the Pilgrimage itself.”
