Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Adam and Eve


NBA was on...now Friends...


I thought a bit on Adam's and Eve's tombs...looked them up before...part of a Wahabi web search back during 911 aftermath...brb...


quote


Ibn Jubayr (twelfth century) mentions only an old dome, “built upon the place where Eve stopped on the way to Meccah.” Yet Al-Idrisi (A.D. 1154) declares Eve’s grave to be at Jeddah. Abd al-Karim (1742) compares it to a parterre, with a little dome in the centre, and the extremities ending in barriers of palisades; the circumference was a hundred and ninety of his steps. In Rooke’s Travels we are told that the tomb is twenty feet long. Ali Bey, who twice visited Jeddah, makes no allusion to it; we may therefore conclude that it had been destroyed by the Wahhabis. Burckhardt, who, I need scarcely say, has been carefully copied by our popular authors, was informed that it was a “rude structure of stone, about four feet in length, two or three feet in height, and as many in breadth”; thus resembling the tomb of Noah, seen in the valley of Al-Buka’a in Syria. Bruce writes: “Two days’ journey from this place (? Meccah or Jeddah) Eve’s grave, of green sods, about fifty yards in length, is shown to this day”; but the great traveller probably never issued from the town-gates. And Sir W. Harris, who could not have visited the Holy Place, repeats, in 1840, that Eve’s grave of green sod is still shown on the barren shore of the Red Sea.” The present structure is clearly modern; anciently, I was told at Jeddah, the sepulchre consisted of a stone at the head, a second at the feet, and the navel-dome.
The idol of Jeddah, in the days of Arab litholatry, was called Sakhrah Tawilah, the Long Stone. May not this stone of Eve be the Moslemized revival of the old idolatry? It is to be observed that the Arabs, if the tombs be admitted as evidence, are inconsistent in their dimensions of the patriarchal stature. The sepulchre of Adam at the Masjid al-Khayf is, like that of Eve, gigantic. That of Noah at Al-Buka’a is a bit of Aqueduct thirty-eight paces long by one and a half wide. Job’s tomb near Hulah (seven parasangs from Kerbela) is small. I have not seen the grave of Moses (south-east of the Red Sea), which is becoming known by the bitumen cups there sold to pilgrims. But Aaron’s sepulchre in the Sinaitic peninsula is of moderate dimensions.


Richard Burton
Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah




lemesee what Sir Richard says about the Kaaba...brb...


quote


So the Persian poet Khakani addresses these two buildings:—
“O Kaabah, thou traveller of the heavens!”

“O Venus, thou fire of the world!”


and


And Al-Shahristani informs us that the Arab philosophers believed this sevenfold circumambulation to be symbolical of the motion of the planets round the sun.


unquote


Sir Richard seems to have visited the place in the company of 'Kim'!


but back to Adam and Eve and their tombs...


quote


To His Majesty Ibn Saud, warlike Sultan of Nejd and King of the Hejaz, came tidings last week of his flourishing son the Amir Faisal, 19-year-old Viceroy of the Hejaz. The tidings were conveyed 500 miles by motor caravan from the Red Sea town of Jidda in the Hejaz, to the Sultan's inland capital, Riyadh, in Nejd. There was it made known that the enlightened son & Viceroy had finally caused to be obliterated that notorious imposture, "The Tomb of Mother Eve," at Jidda.
Quaint, but probably constructed within the last millenium, the bogus "tomb" was an enclosure whose walls marked the outline of a supposedly buried female of gigantic stature. At the head was a raised mound. Midway in the enclosure rose a small whitewashed dome, protecting from the elements a mystic black stone, El Surrah.
Doubtless the young Viceroy Faisal has learned on his two recent trips to England that El Surrah, the navel, is taboo among moderns. Last week he could point with pride to the demolition of the entire "tomb," and to the removal among the debris of El Surrah.


Time




El Surrah?




quote


The tomb is a walled enclosure said to represent the dimensions of the body, about 200 paces long and 15 ft. broad. At the head is a small erection where gifts are deposited, and rather more than half-way down a whitewashed dome encloses a small dark chapel within which is the black stone known as El Surrah, the navel. The grave of Eve is mentioned by Edrisi, but except the black stone nothing bears any aspect of antiquity (see Burton's Pilgrimage, vol. ii.).




unquote


That last account from 1911!


brb...


This site has a tour account of Jeddah...and a bit on Eve's tomb...and a pic of a sculpture that looks like the calligraphy on Idries Shah's The Sufis...apparently a common imagery!


well..where was Adam buried?...


this site has list!




quote


There are at least two explanations for the etymology of the name 'Jeddah'. One is that name means "seashore," since Jeddah is located along the Red Sea coast and is Saudi Arabia's most important commercial port. The more common account has it that the name is derived from jaddah, the Arabic word for "grandmother". According to eastern folk belief, the tomb of Eve (21°29′31″N 39°11′24″E / 21.49194, 39.19), considered the grandmother of humanity, is located in Jeddah. The supposed "Eve Grave" was sealed with concrete by the religious authorities in 1975 as a result of some Muslim pilgrims breaking Islamic tradition by praying at Eve's tomb.




unquote
Adam and Eve by Gustave Klimt
Well...a brief note...this "Souvenir"....is a year old...actually the first post was March 22...but...if I have it right!...May 8 I posted Pocket Pair...which got things started...thought to do a post with beeps and whistles...a music video of 99 Red Balloons...with a kaleidoscope of the images I've snagged...someones probably done something similar...save me the work...brb...
search youtube: 99 red balloons
Oh!...'Pocket Pair' was April 8...well...I thought to call it all a "Year and a Day"...which can be modified to..."A Year and a Month"...in the Incomparable Valley...
DavidDavid




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