[ Jordan - Pt. 3] Hajj Fort: A night in the desert

Our route (2018)

​Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, is the mandatory religious duty a Muslim must perform at least once in their lifetime. For centuries, the Attabukiyah, the 1,300 km long Syrian Hajj Road linking Damascus to Mecca was the main thoroughfare.

In the old days Hajj didn’t only have a religious implication; it also expanded the possibilities of science, commerce and politics in the Islamic world. Hajj pilgrims would have carried with them the exotic goods from home to pay their way, others bore the latest concepts and ideas - the essentials of the intellectual life of the Islamic World. This would in turn inspire Muslim advances in mathematics, optics, astronomy, navigation, transportation, geography, education, medicine, finance, culture and even politics.

The Attabukiyah was by and large Arabia’s own ‘Silk Road’.

'Pilgrims going to Mecca' (1861) by French painter Léon Belly (1827-1877). It depicts the column of pilgrims' caravan on Hajj towards Mecca. Notice the different clothings, including a pilgrim in his white Chokha, the long cloak with front-breasted pockets for bullets, native to the Caucasian mountains.

In the 16th century, Arabia became part of the Ottoman Empire’s possession, and so did the organisation of Hajj. Under the leadership of the Emir al-Hajj, the ‘Commander of the Pilgrims’, caravan of Muslim pilgrims once stretched across miles of hostile desert, following the very road that Mohammed would have used in his early years as a merchant.

Back then, to have earned the honorific title ‘Haji’, meaning someone who has successfully completed their Hajj, was not an easy task. This stretch of desert was notorious for Bedouin raiding and was extremely dangerous. In response the Ottomans constructed a series of Hajj forts along the way, protecting the pilgrims and traders on their long journey to the Holy Cities.

Arriving at the Hajj fort - visible in the distance.

Hajj Fort, view from the front. The piles of dirt were all dug up by decades of 'gold-digging'.

We were spending a night in one of these Hajj fort, deep in the desert between the border of Jordan and Saudi Arabia. With me was a fellow roommate from a hostel in Amman, Niklas, an aspiring Arabist – equally brave, or perhaps just equally reckless.

In contrast to Petra’s Corinthian columns - which looks as if they were carved yesterday, decades of digging for the rumoured ‘Ottoman Gold’ have destroyed much of this 16th century heritage. Just to get into the fort, you would have to negotiate with a 10 feet deep hole directly under the gatehouse in order to climb into the mostly dug-up courtyard itself.

Hugh hole dug by gold diggers underneath the entrance gatehouse to the fort.

It resembles a typical caravanserai in the Middle East, with a huge courtyard presumably for the keeping of animals in the middle. A pool was constructed just a stone throw’s away – as water scarcity was another very real threat in this hospitable landscape. A large mihrab on the southern end of the ground floor is the only surviving evident of the piety of centuries of passing pilgrims.

Central courtyard of the Hajj fort.

To get ready for the night, we had chosen the upper level as our ‘bedroom’, where we could have a commanding view of the surrounding valley and the gatehouse below in case there were to be any unexpected visitors approaching at night. It was around here that the Hajj caravan was attacked by the Bani Sakr tribesmen in 1757. 20,000 pilgrims died as a result, many were killed, others were stripped and died from thirst and exposure in the desert. One of them was the the Ottoman Sultan’s own sister. Although modern travellers no longer have to worry about Bedouin raiding, and ultimately there are not much you can do being out and exposed in the desert alone, I thought it would be a good idea to keep an eye on things, just to be on the safe side.

Preparing dinner for the night at our 'bedroom'

After a particularly sandy dinner, we had rearranged a few stones against the wind, set up our sleeping bags and braced ourselves for the freezing night. Despite my down sleeping bag, a down jacket and another layer of a waterproof jacket with a fleece lining, it was becoming clear that they were not going to be enough. This was the desert where Lawrence of Arabia wrote about having to wake up and discovered a few of his companions dead – from exposure during the night.

Getting ready for the freezing night in the desert.

Niklas checking our food stored in the wall the morning after.

The only comfort I felt was the brightness of the moon, illuminating everything around and constantly moving every time I opened my eyes. At the sound of rubbing plastic bags, we woke up and found the only visitor of the night: a jerboa, the long legged desert rodent, busy chewing through our plastic bag of bread we have stored in a hole on the wall.

​Deeper into the night I was starting to feel that my toes were becoming numb from the cold – but I was relieved to find out that the night was almost over. The hour before sunrise felt like eternity - the night is certainly the coldest just before dawn.