From Mecca to Kūfa

T he departure from Mecca (God Most High ennoble her). On the twentieth day precisely of Dhu’l-Ḥijja ¹ I went out of Mecca in company with the commander of the caravan of al-‘Irāq, the Pehlewān Muḥammad al-Ḥawīh, ² a man of al-Mawṣil, who occupied the office of commander of the pilgrims after the death of Shaikh Shihāb al-Dīn Qalandar. Shihāb al-Dīn was an open-handed and worthy man, who was held in high honour by his sultan, and used to shave his beard and eyebrows after the fashion of the Qalandarīs. ³ When I left Mecca (God Most High ennoble her) in company with the above-mentioned amīr Pehlewān, he hired for me the half of a double litter as far as Baghdād, paying its cost from his own purse, and took me under his protection. We went out to the Bottom of Marr, ⁴ after performing the Farewell Circuit with a host of men of al-‘Irāq, Khurāsān, Fārs and other eastern lands, of uncountable multitude, [so many that] the earth surged with them | [as the sea surges] with dashing waves and their advance was like the march of high-piled clouds. Anyone who left the caravan for a natural want and had no mark by which to guide himself to his place could not find it again for the vast number of people. Included in this caravan were many water-carrying camels for the poorer pilgrims, ⁵ who could obtain drinking water from them, and other camels to carry provisions [for issue] as alms and to carry medicines, potions and sugar for those who should be attacked by illness. Whenever the caravan halted food was 250cooked in great brass cauldrons, called dasts, ⁶ and supplied from them to the poorer pilgrims and those who had no provisions. With the caravan also was a number of [spare] camels for the carriage of those who were unable to walk. All of this was due to the benefactions and generosity of the Sultan Abū Sa‘īd.