Authors: Vincent J. Cornell
L
ETTER TO
M
ANKIND
•
Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore
I have been to the center of the earth. Jules Verne didn’t get it right.
It’s not down in cavernous bowels of igneous rock swathed in
sulfurous fumes.
The serpents of the self and its idolized distractions are the only monsters to
come at you out of the rocks.
I have been to the Ka‘ba at Mecca
as pure as a heartbeat, as stunning in time and space as a precious diamond decreed by God to be
cut by the hand of man to mirror His Glory.
All is clarity there, and concentration.
The ears are filled with a joyous noise.
The eyes behold God’s plan in the masses of humanity that pass there that
reduce in every case to one: One heart before One God in one moment in time,
the most public place on earth for the most private encounter with our Lord.
I’ve sat among its people, I’ve
stood in the first rows of prayer facing the House, black cloth covering
258
Voices of the Spirit
stone,
I’ve bowed and prostrated as swallows wheel in a
sky so saturated with
light as to scintillate with a jagged indelible brightness.
This is still man’s major crossroad.
Around the Ka‘ba even the worst of men for a while
regain their innocence and are renewed.
If they are lost in awe and tears flow and they call on Allah with each heartbeat
they are in Paradise.
If they walk around the House of Allah chatting and distracted they are
still in God’s Garden, so powerful is the presence there.
The Ka‘ba is of a
blackness that is not black, of a dimension that has no
size, of a cubeness that has no
shape in space,
neither size, shape nor color define it, yet it is
such-and-such a dimension in roughly cube shape with a
golden door set in its side and a
golden rainspout over one edge at the top
made of square blocks of gray stone caulked with white and
covered over with fine black brocade to the ground embroidered at the top with the
golden calligraphy of God’s Word.
Inside it is empty.
(I was there one morning when they rolled a wooden stairway to the door and opened it and the
crowd came to a halt and
Letter to Mankind
259
gasped, and many of us burst into tears—I nearly
was able to enter, but
dignitaries and pilgrims with special green cards were the
only ones allowed—
but I saw men in the darkness inside face the inner wall and do the prayer,
prostrating to Allah from inside facing out in the holy space we pray towards
every day
outside
facing
in!
)
White and pearly gray marble slabs make a floor from the Ka‘ba to the edge of the mosque courtyard for the millions of
feet to pace, even the feet of
cats, lean felines of Mecca, one seen doing the seven prescribed circuits, a
perfect pilgrim of a cat,
before wandering off among the human multitudes.
Faces float forward from the faces we bear until I think all the
faces on earth are present there,
even unbelievers, even non-Muslims represented by the
intensity in the faces of those who go around God’s House—
no one on earth ignored by God, no one not brushed by
angels’ wings, no one in this creation of His
left in utter desolation, but is sustained and
conveyed into His Presence.
This is the heart of the world. The self of man.
The spirit of our consciousness in life and death.
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Voices of the Spirit
Distinctions blurred and distinctions sharpened at the same time.
Heavens rolled up, seas dried, earth-prints erased.
No one’s gone anywhere.
No one’s done anything. No one’s
taken a step or even the minutest breathtaking space of separation
away from the House of Allah at the
center of the earth of mankind in
space in Mecca in what is now Saudi Arabia
January 6, 1996,
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the United States of America,
3:25 A.M. one cold winter morning in my bed on earth
at the feast of our Lord.
NOTE
This poem first appeared in Daniel Abdal-Hayy Moore,
Mecca/Medina Time- Warp.
Reprinted from a Zilzal Press chapbook, by permission from the author.
•
‘Abbas ibn ‘Abul Muttalib, 85 ‘Abbasid dynasty, 85, 117; ‘Ashura
symbolism and rebellion, 112 ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Saud (King of Saudi
Arabia), 84
‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al Shaykh (Mufti of Saudi Arabia), 245
‘Abd al-‘Aziz ibn Baz (Mufti of Saudi Arabia), 245
‘Abd
(slave): achievement of, 44, 45;
religious mentality, 159–60;
worshiper as, 158 ‘Abdullah ibn ‘Abbas, 250
Abdur-Rahman (Archangel), 32 Ablutions.
See Wudu
(ablutions) Abraham, 20, 92; Day of Arafat and, 3;
prayer, 2, 20
Abu al-Qasim al-Junayd, 253 Abu Bakr al-Jaza’iri, 220
Abu Bakr al-Siddiq, 42, 94, 114, 242;
tomb of, 82
Abu Bakr al-Tamastani al-Farsi, 172 Abu Basir, 230–231
Abu Hamza, 159–61
Abu Hanifa Nu‘man ibn Thabit, 215, 241, 249
Abu Hurayra, 18, 68–69, 90, 244–45
Abu Ja‘far ibn Jarir at-Tabari, 226 Abu Sufyan, 234
Acceptance, Merton and al-‘Alawi, 150
Adab
(decorum), 16
Adam, 21–22, 32
Al-‘Adawiyya, Rabi‘a, 175, 177
Adhan
(call to prayer): Abraham and,
1–4; newborn babies, 35; words of,
3–4
Adil al-Haqqani, Muhammad Nazim, 39
Afterlife, sunset prayers and, 20 Afternoon prayers.
See Asr
(afternoon
prayers)
Agape,
165 n.6
Age requirement for combative Jihad, 237–38
Ahmad (heavenly name of Prophet), prayer symbolism, 34
Ahmad, ‘A’isha bint, 170 Ahmad, Amir, 106
‘A’isha (wife of Prophet), 39, 43, 115,
238; tomb, 82
Akhfa
(innermost), 23–24
‘Alawi, 113
Al-Albani, Nasir, 223
Alchemical tradition, 141
Alcohol consumption, 93 ‘Ali, Abdullah Yusuf, 47 n.30
‘Alids,
113
‘Ali ibn Abi Talib, 44, 85, 93–94, 113–
14
‘Ali Zayn al-‘Abinin, 116 Allah,
dhikr
of, 66–69 Allah ibn Zayd, ‘Abd, 3–4
Al-sa’il
(personal self-defense), 220 Al-‘Alawi, Ahmad, 143–55
Amin Ahsan Islahi, 249–50 Amuli, Haydar, 42
Analogical gradations, 162–63 Anarchy.
See Fitna
(mayhem)
262
Index
Andalusia Inquisition of 1492, 218–19 Angels, prostration before Adam, 32 Annihilation: Gnostic and, 151; station
of, 45; Sufi dance, 59; symbolism in prayer cycle, 20–21; union and self-, 161
Ansari
clan, 94
Apostates, 253
Appearance, spiritual significance, 28– 30
Arabesque design, love as, 139–40 Arabs: Medina indigenous clans, 94;
Shiite, 120, 121
Arab society, revolution and women, 188
Arab tribes, 75–76
Art, fear, love and knowledge in, 139– 40
Ascension.
See Mi‘raj
(ascension) ‘Ashura, 111–22; Iran political
legitimacy, 119; rituals types of, 121–22; symbolism, 111–12
Asr
(afternoon prayers), 20, 21 Assignation of ‘Uthman ibn ‘Affan,
115
‘Ata’ illah al-Iskandari, 67, 184
Atheists, 63
Attachments, purification from, 23 Attractiveness of evil, 137 Augustine, St., 132
Autumn, 20
Awadh, 120
Awe, servitude and, 169
Bab al-Rahma, 90, 92 Bad
vs
evil, 135
Al-Bahjuri, 249
Bahuti (Imam), 211
Bakka valley, Abraham and, 1 Banu Khuza’a tribe, 234
Al-Baqi’, 85
Baqi’ al-Gharqad,
84–85
Baqi’ Graveyard, 94
Al-Bara’a
(enmity for the sake of God), 232
Bara’ ibn Malik, 247
Al-Basri, Hasan, 145, 175
Bathing, purification and ritual, 16 Battle of Badr, 86–87, 89
Battle of the Camel, 115, 117
Battle of Karbala, 115–17, 119; ‘Ashura rituals and, 121–22
Battle of Siffin, 117 Battle of the Trench, 95 Battle of Yamama, 248 Baudelaire, Charles, 133
Beauty.
See Jamal
(beauty) Beirut, Lebanon, 189, 191
Belief: ‘Ashura and, 112; revelation and, 63–64
Believers, Circle of Unconditional Lovers, 23
Beloved.
See Mahbub
(beloved) Beloved–lover relationship, 158–59 Birth defects, evil and, 135
Body: purification of, 17; purity and covering, 24–25
Books as
dhikr,
60–61 Bosnian Sufis, 59–60