The Nomadic Alternative – Page 114

Mohammed introduced the Hadj in the Islamic Year 10 when, for reasons of policy, he substituted the lunar for the existing solar calendar. The sacred Journey was called after the Arabian month of the same name, a time for 'going round' (on migrations) as opposed to the previous one, which was the time for sitting still. The true Arabian nomad curses the sun.

For the Rwala Bedouin the Sun is not that glorious stream of masculine potency venerated and absorbed by Louis XIV. The Sun is a strong bony female, mean and old, angry and insatiable. Being sterile herself, she is jealous of life. She shrivels pasture, roasts camels alive and sharpens thorns. Paradise lies below the ground.

Hell is a sunlit sky. The end of the dry season is the narrow passage for the desert nomad and he calls it "the time of the beasts", when his animals are at their weakest and the jackals most voracious.

He imagines all good things in life to come from the Moon. The Moon is an energetic young man, who guards the nomad while he sleeps, guides him on night journeys, brings life-giving rain and distills dew on the withering plants. He is on the side of the angels but has the misfortune to be married to the Sun. Since he is incapable of satisfying her sexual cravings, he grows thin and wasted and takes a month to recover from one disagreeable night with her.

Mohammed's lunar calendar affirmed Arabia Deserta's constitution for a new world order and meant that Islamic ceremonies are moveable feasts which advance ten or eleven days in a year, making a complete cycle in just over thirty six years. Ramadan, the Muslim equivalent of our Lenten fast, originally fell in the hot summer season. The verb ramz means "to burn". The sun burned away sins, Mohammed thought, and the added effects of malnutrition provoked ecstatic communion with the divine. "The Gates of Heaven are open and the Gates of Hell are shut and the devils are chained by the leg; and only those who observe it will be permitted to enter at the gate of Heaven called Raiyan." Mishkat VII,i,pt.i. The Prophet insisted on the importance of sticking to the time-table of seasonal ceremonies. "Putting them off", he said, "increases misbelief and leads further astray those off".