Обсуждение:Ас-Сафа и аль-Марва

Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān / Ṣafā and Marwa

Two low hills near the Kaʿba (q.v.) in Mecca (q.v.) between which the pilgrim engages in a brisk walk or trot called “the running” (al- saʿy) during the pilgrimage (q.v.; ḥajj and ʿumra). This running is an obligatory station ( mansik, pl. manāsik) among the various ritual activities during the ten days of the ḥajj pilgrimage ritual at Mecca (see ritual and the qurʾān ).

The root meaning of ṣafā is to be clear or pure, from which comes the familiar name muṣṭafā, meaning “elected” or “chosen” (see names of the prophet; election), but may also designate smooth stones. Lexicographers define marwa as “a bright, glittering stone that may produce fire.” These words have been used since pre-Islamic times as the names for the two Meccan hills and are mentioned once in ¶ the Qurʾān ( q 2:158): “ al-Ṣafā and al-Marwa are among the ritual ceremonies ( shaʿāʾir) of God. Therefore, whoever makes the ḥajj or the ʿumra to the house [the Kaʿba] incurs no sin by making the circuit between them (an yaṭṭawwafa bi-himā). God knows and is thankful to whoever voluntarily does a good deed (see good deeds ).”

This passage attests to the antiquity of the ritual circumambulation between Ṣafā and Marwa. The act, referred to in post-qurʾānic literature as al- saʿy, is one of many religious rituals that emerged in the pre-Islamic period in relation to the sacred sites in and around Mecca, which were absorbed into Islam (see pre-islamic arabia and the qurʾān; south arabia, religion in pre-islamic). It is possible that the old practice was an independent act of divine worship but it was eventually absorbed into a series of ritual activities that make up the ḥajj and ʿumra. The tenor of the Qurʾān indicates some ambivalence regarding the ceremony.

Two positions emerged early on with respect to the duty to engage in the ritual. One understands the verse to mean that it is not required in Islam because the qurʾānic expression, “there is no sin in doing it” implies legal neutrality ( mubāḥ; see sin, major and minor; law and the qurʾān). The second position, one that quickly became the norm, assumes that the ritual is obligatory. The latter position required additional support, however, which it found in the sunna (q.v.) of the Prophet. The argument, as put forth on the authority of Muḥammad's wife ʿĀʾisha (see ʿāʾisha bint abī bakr ), was that if the rite were not required, the verse would have read, “Whoever makes the ḥajj… incurs no sin by not making the circuit between them.”

The origin of the running ritual is uncertain and two sets of traditions have evolved to explain it. The oldest explains ¶ that in pre-Islamic times pilgrims who were engaged in the “running” would touch two sacred stones erected on the two hills, images of the gods Isāf and Nāʾila. The two stones were once human lovers who had engaged in sexual intercourse in the sacred Kaʿba for which they were turned into stone. Their petrified images were later set in place on the two hills in order to warn pilgrims against improper conduct in the sacred places. Over the years, the origin of these stones was forgotten and people began to worship them as idols (see idols and images ). Lazarus-Yafeh (Religious dialectics) suggests that this legend attests to the ancient Near Eastern cultic practice of ritual prostitution practiced at one time in Mecca.

A second set of traditions authenticates the ritual by associating it with Abraham (q.v.). Al-Ṭabarī (d. 310/923) includes the suggestion that it was one of the stations of pilgrimage ( manāsik al-ḥajj) that Abraham prayed God would teach him and Ishmael (q.v.) as they raised up the foundations of the “house” ( bayt, q 2:127-8; see house, domestic and divine ). A variation of the Abraham theme found more consistently in the sources places the origin in Abraham's act of leaving Hagar and Ishmael in the location of the future sacred area of Mecca ( q 14:37, read with Genesis 21 as subtext). According to a number of variants attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās (d. 68/686-8), Sarah's jealousy of Hagar after the birth of Ishmael caused such strife in the family household that the two women had to be separated. Abraham therefore personally brought Hagar and her son to Mecca and left them near the location of the Kaʿba. Before leaving them, Abraham recited q 14:37: “O lord! I have made some of my offspring live in an uncultivated wādī by your sacred house, in order, O lord, that they establish regular prayer (q.v.). So fill the hearts of some with ¶ love toward them, and feed them with fruits so that they may give thanks.” Hagar and Ishmael's water soon ran out and the infant Ishmael began to die of thirst. In desperation, Hagar climbed the nearby hills of Ṣafā and Marwa seeking a better vantage point in her search for water and ran between them seven times. Her running is usually described in some way that will shed light on how one should “run” the saʿy of pilgrimage. When she returned to Ishmael, she found him with an angel, sometimes identified as Gabriel (q.v.), who scratched the earth with his heel or wing to bring forth water, thereby saving the progenitors of the future northern Arabs. This legend also serves as an etiology for the sacred Zamzam spring in Mecca (see wells and springs).

Each of these two traditions provided an acceptable etiology and, therefore, justification, to continue practicing a religious ritual within Islam that was clearly associated with idolatrous practices in the pre-Islamic period. The specific qurʾānic verse referring to Ṣafā and Marwa occurs shortly after verses treating the controversy over the proper qibla (q.v.), or direction of prayer ( q 2:142-5). This suggests that the qurʾānic redactors may have understood q 2:158 as supporting an Arabization of emerging Islam as adherents of the new monotheism strove to understand their particular religious system in relation to Judaism and Christianity on the one hand and indigenous Arabian religious practice on the other.

---

Bibliography

Primary

al-Azraqī, Abū l-Walīd Muḥammad b. ʿAbdallāh, Akhbār Makka, in F. Wüstenfeld (ed.), Die Chroniken der Stadt Mekka, 2 vols., Göttingen 1858, repr. Beirut n.d., i, 24-5, 74-5

al-Ghazālī, Abū Ḥāmid Muḥammad b. Muḥammad, Iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn, 4 vols., Cairo 1289/1872, i, 252-8 ¶ (book 7, ch. 3, section 2)

Ibn al-Kalbī, Kitāb al-Aṣnām, Cairo 1924, 9, 29

Lisān al-ʿArab, 15 vols., Beirut 1990, xiv, 462-4; xv, 275-6

Ṭabarī, Tafsīr, Beirut 1984, ii, 43-52 (ad q 2:158); viii, 229-30 (ad q 14:37)

Yāqūt, Buldān, Beirut 1990, iii, 467; v, 136-7

Secondary

M.L. al-Batanūnī, al-Riḥla al-ḥijāziyya, Cairo 1911

Burton, Collection, 12-3, 30-1

R. Firestone, Journeys in holy lands. The evolution of the Abraham-Ishmael legends in Islamic exegesis, New York 1990, 63-71

G. von Grunenbaum, Muhammadan festivals, New York 1951

A. Kamāl, al-Riḥla al-muqaddasa. The sacred journey, bilingual edition, New York 1961

H. Lazarus-Yafeh, The religious dialectics of the hadjdj, in H. Lazarus-Yafeh, Some religious aspects of Islam, Leiden 1981, 22-4

F.E. Peters, The hajj. The Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca and the holy places, Princeton 1994

U. Rubin, The Kaʿba.

Aspects of its ritual functions and position in pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, in jsai 8 (1986), 97-131

Cite this page

Firestone, Reuven, “Ṣafā and Marwa”, in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: Jane Dammen McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC. Consulted online on 07 January 2017 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1875-3922_q3_EQSIM_00365>

4/518-520