A Season In Mecca Abdellah Hammoudi by Abdellah Hammoudi 9780745637891, 0745637892 instant download after payment.

In 1999, the Moroccan scholar Abdellah Hammoudi, trained in Parisand teaching in America, decided to go on the pilgrimage to Mecca.He wanted to observe the hajj as an anthropologist but also toexperience it as an ordinary pilgrim, and to write about it forboth Muslims and non-Muslims. Here is his intimate, intense, anddetailed account of the hajj ? a rare and important documentby a subtle, learned, and sympathetic writer. Hammoudi describes not just the adventure, the human pressures,and the social tumult ? everything from the earlypreparations to the last climactic scenes in the holy shrines ofMedina and Mecca ? but also the intricate politics andamazing complexity of the entire pilgrimage experience. He paysspecial heed to the effects of Saudi bureaucratic control over thehajj, to the ways that faith itself becomes a lucrative source ofcommerce for the Arabian kingdom, and to the Wahhabi inflections ofthe basic Muslim message. Here, too, is a poignant discussion of the inner voyage thatpilgrimage can mean to those who embark on it: the transformedsense of daily life, of worship, and of political engagement.Hammoudi acknowledges that he was spurred to reconsider his ownideas about faith, gesture, community, and nationality inunanticipated ways. This is a remarkable work of literature aboutboth the outer forms and the inner meanings of Islam today.