ZIAUDDIN SARDAR is both fascinated and appalled by Islam’s holiest city. One of Britain’s best-known Muslim writers and commentators, he grew up in the Punjab with a fascination for the Kaaba, the huge brick cube, draped in black cloth, which is the centrepiece of Mecca’s Sacred Mosque.
對這座伊斯蘭最神圣的城市，ZIAUDDIN SARDAR既曾深深著迷，又曾備感震驚。作為英國著名穆斯林作家和評論家之一，在旁遮普長大的他對位于麥加大清真寺廣場中心的、外覆黑布的大型石造建筑克爾白神廟充滿了向往。

He knew that it was to Mecca that Muslims must direct their prayers, and to Mecca that they must go on pilgrimage, or haj, at least once in a lifetime. But as he learned more of the city’s history, he discovered another Mecca at odds with the first, a place of feuds and power struggles, of greed and bigotry. These two cities form the subject of his book—a project of love and disenchantment—which tells Mecca’s story from pre-Islamic times until today. The city is unique, and yet, seen through Mr Sardar’s eyes, it is also a microcosm: “a stage where the condition of the Muslim world…could be seen enacted.”
他知道麥加是穆斯林祈禱的朝向，每個穆斯林一生中至少要來這里朝圣一次。但隨著他對麥加歷史了解的深入，他看到了與圣城之名并不相符的另一個麥加——冤仇難解，兄弟鬩墻，貪欲無止，偏見盛行。這兩個麥加構(gòu)成了他書的主題——他的筆傾注了對麥加的愛戀，也述說了對麥加的失望——講述了從伊斯蘭到來之前直至現(xiàn)在的麥加故事。這座城市獨一無二，同時在Sardar看來，也是一個縮影——“透過麥加，我們可以看到穆斯林世界現(xiàn)狀如何確立?！?br>
For Western readers much of the story will be unfamiliar. Non-Muslims are now excluded from the city, but this was not always so. The Prophet Muhammad rubbed shoulders with Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians and pagans. It was only later, under the seventh-century Umayyads, that Christians and Jews were excluded, something that Mr Sardar deplores. Readers might suppose that, in Islam’s golden age, Mecca, like Baghdad and Damascus, was a centre of culture and civilisation. It was not. It “founded no great library, no university, no hospital”. The city was as profane as it was sacred. The merchants took pleasure in music and dancing, in their concubines—and in fleecing pilgrims.
對西方讀者來說，這個故事大部分都是陌生的。非穆期林現(xiàn)在被排斥在這座城市之外，但歷史上并非總是如此。穆罕默德曾與基督徒、猶太教徒、拜火教徒及其他異教徒和平相處。只是后來在7世紀(jì)倭馬亞人統(tǒng)治下，基督徒和猶太教徒才被逐出圣城。Sardar對此痛心疾首。讀者可能以為，在伊斯蘭的黃金時期，麥加和巴格達及大馬士革一樣，是阿拉伯地區(qū)文化和文明的中心。事實并非如此。這里沒有建造宏大的圖書館，沒有大學(xué)，沒有醫(yī)院。這座城市被褻瀆了，正如它被神化一樣。這里的商人夜夜笙歌，妻妾成群，甚至敲詐朝圣者，并以此為樂。

Arabian history, in which rulers and conquerors come and go with numbing frequency, is not always fun. Mr Sardar tries to enliven it with quirky asides (about religious extremism, the “what ifs” of history and the poetry of William Butler Yeats). Some of the best pages describe his own experience of the haj, including the drama of 1979 when fanatics took over Mecca’s Sacred Mosque and held it for two weeks, an event he witnessed.
興勃亡忽的統(tǒng)治者和征服者來去匆匆，令人麻木，這樣的阿拉伯歷史并不總能讓人感興趣。Sardar為此加了一些新奇的題外話（諸如宗教極端主義、歷史假設(shè)、葉芝的詩），以為這段歷史添些活力。一些極佳的章節(jié)中描述了他去麥加朝圣的親身經(jīng)歷，包括他親眼目睹的1979年鬧劇——麥加禁寺被狂熱分子占領(lǐng)兩周。

In the author’s view, Mecca turned in on itself long before the birth of modern Saudi Arabia in the 1930s. The Saudis, with their puritanical and iconoclastic creed of Wahhabism, have made things much worse, he believes. He is scandalised by their treatment of the holy city, its sanctuaries now dwarfed by high-rise blocks and five-star hotels. Worse, they have destroyed shrines and tombs they feared could become objects of worship. In the process, the city’s religious diversity has “virtually disappeared”.
在作者看來，早在1930年代沙特阿拉伯王國建立之前，麥加就已與外界隔絕。他認為持清教徒式的、反對多神崇拜信條的瓦哈比主義的沙特人使麥加每況愈下。他對沙特人對圣城的所作所為備感震驚，如今，神殿與其周圍的高層建筑、五星酒店相比顯得矮小無比。更有甚者，瓦哈比派摧毀了圣地和陵墓，擔(dān)心這會成為人們崇拜的對象。在此過程中，麥加的宗教多樣性“事實上已不復(fù)存在”。

Mr Sardar worked in Jeddah at the Haj Research Centre between 1975 and 1979. He and his colleagues campaigned for a more enlightened approach to the city’s architecture and human ecology. He left disillusioned that their advice was not heeded.
關(guān)于作者：Sardar于1975至1979年間在沙特阿拉伯吉達市的朝覲研究所工作，他和同事致力于推動政府對圣城的建筑及人類生態(tài)系統(tǒng)采取較為開明的政策。他們的建議沒有得到政府的重視，他最終帶著失望離開了麥加。