English pirates turning #Turk
Sacred Mysteries: Among the myths that Pitts dispelled was that the tomb of Mohammed floated above the ground by the power of a lodestone or magnet.
One day, on his pilgrimage to Mecca, Joseph Pitts sat down, then after a while lay, with his feet towards the Kaaba (pictured here from a 16th-century Turkish manuscript). A Turk beside him asked what country he was from. From the West, he replied. How far west? From Algiers. “Have you taken so much pains and been at so much cost,” the Turk said, “and now be guilty of this irreverent posture before the House of God?”
That was in 1684. Pitts was the first Englishman to give a reliable account of the hajj to Mecca, in his Faithful Account of the Religion and Manners of the Mahometans (1704). It is now republished with notes and a fascinating introduction by Paul Auchterlonie (Arabian Publishing, £48).
Among the myths that Pitts dispelled was that the tomb of Mohammed floated above the ground by the power of a lodestone or magnet. He was able to give eyewitness details because he was there as a Muslim, by his account having embraced the religion after a good deal of beating. His third owner treated him more kindly, granting his freedom on their return from Mecca.
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