The Englishman who went by myself to Mecca
Few British writers had visited Mecca earlier than Eldon Rutter, an enigmatic determine who at some point disappeared
When Eldon Rutter visited Mecca and Medina in 1925-6, seven different Britons had written of making a pilgrimage there. subsequent week see this year’s nice Hajj, and plenty of British pilgrims can be there, but none who usually are not Muslim.
Of British guests to Mecca before Rutter, some made a lot of disguise, such as Richard Burton in 1853, now buried in a tent-formed tomb in a Catholic churchyard in Mortlake.
Joseph Pitts (1685), was transformed underneath duress as a captured slave, and did not make the experience with the aid of possibility. Johann Ludwig Burckhardt (1814), writing for English readers, lived as a Muslim and was once buried as one in Egypt in 1817, having eaten some unhealthy fish.
however who was Eldon Rutter? His reputation peaked in 1928, when his Holy Cities of Arabia in two volumes got here out to enthusiastic opinions. The Spectator in comparison him to Palgrave, Doughty, Burton and Lawrence. T E Lawrence himself judged that no person dared be “Arabians for Arabia’s sake”, that’s, “none, keep Rutter, i feel, and the way just right, how classical his guide”.
but Rutter remains a thriller. thanks to the detective work of Sharon Sharpe, for a brand new adaptation of The Holy Cities (Arabian Publishing, 592pp, £36), we all know that Rutter falsified his age. He was born in 1894, in Camberwell, served within the First World struggle after which found a publish in Malaya, for Nestlé. There he learnt Arabic from immigrants from Hadhramaut in southern Arabia and formally transformed to Islam.
How honest was Rutter? This relevant query is put by means of William Facey in his 50-page biographical preface to the brand new version. Rutter travelled in Arabia as a Syrian merchant, but the discovery in Mecca of his English identification brought about little downside. He used to be often called Salah al-Din al Inkilizi (Saladin the Englishman).
In many ways, Rutter lived below pretences. He wrote as Eldon Rutter, however he had been christened Clement Edward Rutter.
though a Muslim, he married, in 1930, when 36 (or 32 as he claimed) a lady of 19, within the woman Chapel of Exeter Cathedal. much of their married life they have been apart, all over his spells of trip. that they had two youngsters, but he left for Venice in 1956, and was never heard of once more.
used to be Rutter perhaps a British agent? Facey can in finding no proof. H St J Philby didn’t suspect he might be. but Rutter was alive to the danger of being take for a secret agent, for he arrived in Arabia at a most delicate time. The yr prior to, the Ikhwan (Brothers), a very mobile militia, had occupied Mecca. They were devotees of Wahhabism, with which we are now extra familiar. In alliance with them, a unified kingdom of Saudi Arabia triumphed in 1932.
Their austere doctrine from the wasteland of Nejd, looking for a pristine Islam, had results described by Rutter. One was discouragement of even seeming to invoke Mohammed in prayer. “My stick is best than Mohammed,” said one Wahhabi. “Mohammed is useless and long gone, and may revenue nothing; however this my stick has a use.” This, Rutter wrote, made the Meccan crowd murmur, and a battle virtually broke out.
at the Meccan cemetery of al-Ma’la, the place Mohammed’s mother, Amina, his spouse Kadija, and different famous early Muslims were buried, the “small however handsome domes” above their tombs had with out exception now been demolished, at the side of most of the tombstones”. The guardians of the tombs “now not dare to spread their handkerchiefs on the bottom to obtain the pilgrims’ alms”.
it’s a striking scene. I believe a parallel might be Calvinist iconoclasm after the Scottish Reformation.
Few British writers had visited Mecca earlier than Eldon Rutter, an enigmatic figure who one day disappeared
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