ive alms annually of money, cattle, grain,
fruit and merchandise. If a man has as much as eighty rupees, or forty
sheep and goats, or five camels, he should give alms at specified
rates amounting roughly to two and a half per cent of his property. In
the case of fruit and grain the rate is one-tenth of the harvest for
unirrigated, and a twentieth for irrigated crops. These alms should
be given to pilgrims who desire to go to Mecca but have not the means;
and to religious and other beggars if they are very poor, debtors who
have not the means to discharge their debts, champions of the cause
of God, travellers without food and proselytes to Islam. Religious
mendicants consider it unlawful to accept the _zakat_ or legal alms
unless they are very poor, and they may not be given to Saiyads or
descendants of the Prophet.

18. The pilgrimage to Mecca.

The Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca is incumbent on all men and women
who have sufficient means to meet the expenses of the journey and
to maintain their families at home during their absence. Only a
very small proportion of Indian Muhammadans, however, now undertake
it. Mecca is the capital of Arabia and about seventy miles from the Red
Sea. The pilgrimage must be performed during the month Zu'l Hijjah,
so that the pilgrim may be at Mecca on the festival of Id-ul-Zoha
or the Bakr-Id. At the last stage near Mecca the pilgrims assume a
special dress, consisting of two seamless wrappers, one round the
waist and the other over the shoulders. Sandals of wood may also be
worn. Formerly the pilgrim would take with him a little compass in
which the needle in the shape of a dove pointed continually towards
Mecca in the west. On arrival at Mecca he performs the legal ablutions,
proceeds to the sacred mosque, kisses the black stone, and encompasses
the Kaaba seven times. The Kaaba or 'Cube' is a large stone building
and the black stone is let into one of its walls. He drinks the water
of the sacred well Zem-Zem from which Hagar and Ishmael obtained water
when they were dying of thirst in the wilderness, and goes through
various other rites up to the day of Id-ul-Zoha, when he performs
the sacrifice or _kurban_, offering a ram or he-goat for every member
of his family, or for every seven persons a female camel or cow. The
flesh is distributed in the same manner as that of the ordinary Bakr-Id
sacrifice. [320] He then gets himself shaved and his nails pared, which
he has not done since