Mecca
The Sacred City
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- $23.99
Publisher Description
Mecca is, for many, the heart of Islam. It is the birthplace of Muhammad, the direction to which Muslims turn when they pray, and the site of pilgrimage that annually draws some three million Muslims from all corners of the world. Yet the significance of Mecca is more than purely religious. What happens in Mecca and how Muslims think about the political and cultural history of Mecca has had and continues to have a profound influence on world events to this day.
In this insighful book, Ziauddin Sardar unravels the meaning and significance of Mecca. Tracing its history, from its origins as a "barren valley" in the desert to its evolution as a trading town and sudden emergence as the religious center of a world empire, Sardar examines the religious struggles and rebellions in Mecca that have significantly shaped Muslim culture. An illuminative, lyrical, and witty blend of history, reportage, and memoir, Mecca reflects all that is profound and enlightening, curious and amusing about Mecca and takes us behind the closed doors to one of the most important places in the world today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Mecca's magnetism is unrivalled in the Muslim world, but it is known more as a symbol than a living city, the forgotten social and political realities of which Pakistani-British public intellectual Sardar uncovers in this captivating history. Despite its theological centrality, Mecca has often been on the margins of the Muslim polity buffeted by the "irrational logic that haunts the exercise of empire" and many of its rulers have "unashamedly offered... allegiance to the highest bidder." Sardar focuses on human stories rather than dry minutiae, as in the tale of a Dutch scholar/spy who converted to Islam and married a local woman before his conversion was revealed to be a ruse. That Dutchman's "unceremonious expulsion" receives more attention than a succession of emirs, of whom Sardar says "most of them were called Qasim or Hashim, it is not easy to distinguish between them." Mecca today is a "grotesque metropolis," he notes, "built on the graves of houses and cultural sites of immense beauty and long history." The house of the prophet Muhammad is slated to become a parking lot and his first wife's is now a public toilet. The erasure of the city is not confined to its past: "In a city that owes its existence and survival to two women," Sardar laments, "women are treated as chattels."
