Reading in the direction of prayer

Further into the surat al-hajj the use of text and image are intertwined even more. This heightens the scroll’s use as a tool for performance and demonstration. Text is read aloud, images are used illustratively and speech is crucial to taking part in the “reading” of this work.

Arriving in Mecca itself, this image illustrates the prayer moving around the Ka’ba. The calligraphic text moves around the centerpoint in the direction of prayer, making clear one of the rites (acts of devotion) to hajj. The Ka’ba - drawn with sharp inklines and given shape by golden and grey-ish washes in the centre of this image - is a rock touched by the prophet Muhammad. Around this rock is a cube-like structure covered by the kiswah (a black cloth). This fluid calligraphic composition is as important as the image of the Ka’ba itself. Again, it is important to emphasis that the script moves (is read) in the direction of prayer and is the recitation itself.

As you recite aloud from the surat al-Hajj to an audience or collaboratively the reader is able to invite themselves and their listeners on an imaginative pilgrimage. Here you can complete a central rite of hajj entirely through your mind’s eye.

You are able to complete Hajj without having visited Mecca itself..

The orientation of the text towards the Ka’ba, as well as in the direction of prayer, achieves a balanced compositional which aids the act of recitation to a group, and speaks to the object’s performative intentions and the importance of the Ka’ba as an instrument and epicentre of devotion - of world Islam. Centred around the procedure of pilgrimage each part of the scroll exists symbiotically… one needing the other to achieve its purpose of taking us as the reader on a pious (religiously devout) journey.