2 - The Roads to Mecca

Summary

As elite Ottoman Bosnians belonged to multiple places, the pilgrimage equally belonged to their native society. Even though going on the Hajj was an unreachable goal for most Ottoman Bosnians, the pilgrimage was deeply embedded in society in a variety of ways. Its presence in the imagination as well as the emotional and spiritual attachment to it were continuously nurtured, not only through the social prestige that returning Hajjis accrued through the coveted title of Hajji, but also, and even more persistently, in the way in which textual and visual material mediated believers’ aspiration to the sacred. Depictions of Mecca and Medina in manuscripts called dalā’il al-khayrāt circulated in great numbers, bringing an almost palpable presence of the sacred places into Bosnian homes and cultivating believers’ devotion to the Prophet in domestic settings. Other material objects from the Hijaz helped to nurture not only the emotional, but also the sensorial connection: perfumes, oils and eye make-up were some of the most desirable items that Hajjis brought from the pilgrimage. Some material objects linked believers to both the holy places and the other world – for example, the shroud (ihram, the cloth also worn by pilgrims), as well as the outer cover (ćuburtija) were directly connected to the performance of the pilgrimage and the cycle of life.

Apart from figuring in material culture, the pilgrimage was made visible to local Bosnians in the annual succession of farewell and greeting ceremonies for Hajjis. The flow of Hajjis from Bosnia was not steady throughout the Ottoman period, and the numbers varied according to factors beyond the control of individual believers: wars, plague and Bedouin raids on pilgrim caravans all affected the physical mobility of the Hajjis and shaped the expectations of Bosnian Muslims. The rich and the learned were more likely to go to the Hijaz, but, as we will see, those less privileged also managed to travel great distances and emerge from the depths of anonymity thanks to that feat.

One of the main sources for retracing the paths of Ottoman Bosnians is the mecmua (collection of texts, scrapbook) of Mula Mustafa Bašeskija (1731– 1809).