Servant of the two holy places

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The Qubbat Yūsuf on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem with the inscription from 1191 in which the title Servant of the two noble holy places appears for the first time.

Servant of the two noble holy places ( Arabic خادم الحرمين الشريفين Chādim al-Haramain asch-Sharīfain , DMG ḫādim al-ḥaramain aš-šarīfain ) is a title of ruler that has been used by Muslim rulerssince the end of the 12th century, who rule over the two districts of Mecca and Medina , which are holy in Islam . The first ruler to use this title was Saladin . The current title holder is King Salman ibn Abd al-Aziz of Saudi Arabia .

In official publications from Saudi Arabia, the title is rendered in German as “servant of the two holy mosques” or “guardian of both holy places”. These are translations that only approximate the meaning of the title, because the Arabic word ḥaram does not denote a “mosque”, but a sanctuary or a holy area, and the word ḫādim does not mean “guardian” but from "servant". The Arabic adjective šarīf (“noble, sublime”), which is part of the full title, is mostly untranslated in German.

First use under Saladin

The earliest evidence for the use of the title is an Arabic inscription in the Qubbat Yūsuf on the Temple Mount , which is dated to the year 587 of the Hijra (= 1191 AD). Here Saladin is referred to as “servant of the two noble holy places and this sacred house” ( ḫādim al-ḥaramain aš-šarīfain wa-hāḏa al-bait al-muqaddas ). The text is partially illegible at the relevant point, but it is reproduced in full in the collection of Arabic inscriptions from Jerusalem edited by Max van Berchem with a French translation. Bernard Lewis suspects that the introduction of the new title in connection with the rivalry between Saladin and the Abbasid caliph an-Nāsir li-Dīn Allāh for suzerainty over the Hajj and the holy places in the Hejaz . After Saladin, the other Ayyubid sultans also carried the title , later the Egyptian Mamluks .

Mamluk period

The Mamluk clerk al-Qalqashandī (1355–1418) explains in his encyclopedia “Dawn of the Night Blind Man ” (Ṣubḥ al-aʿšā) the title as follows: “'Servant of the two noble holy places' ( ḫādim al-ḥaramain aš-šarīfain ) belongs to the ruler titles. What is meant is the haram of the honored city of Mecca and that of the noble city of the prophets (= Medina). ”The title was linked to the obligation to supply the two holy places with grain, to make subsidy payments to the Sherif of Mecca and to the two saints Financially support sites to living scholars and the poor. When this aid arrived with the pilgrim caravan in Mecca, the Chutba was performed there in the name of the ruling sultan with the honorary title “Servant of the two holy places”.

Since the Mamluk period, the Temple Mount in Jerusalem with the al-Aqsa mosque and the tomb of the patriarchs in Hebron have also been regarded as Haram districts. The Hanbali scholar Mudschīr ad-Din al-'Ulaimī (1456-1522), who drew up a story of Jerusalem and Hebron, there also hinted to the title "servant of the two holy places noble" by relating it to these two cities. He dubbed the ruling Mamluk Sultan Kait-Bay (r. 1468–1496) as "servant of the two noble holy places, the al-Aqsa mosque and the mosque of Hebron, sun and moon".

Ottoman period

In an undated letter to the Ottoman ruler Bayezid I, Timur complained that the Mamluk sultan had switched to calling himself “Sultan of the two holy places” and said that it was enough of the honor when he calls himself “servant” (ḫādim) of the two holy places. An Ottoman source indicates that the Ottoman rulers in the early 15th century addressed the Egyptian sultans as "my father, sultan of the two holy places" (sulṭān-ı ḥaramain babam) . It was not until Mehmed II , who ruled intermittently between 1444 and 1453, that this address was replaced by the less reverent formula “servant of the two holy places” (ḫādim al-ḥaramain) .

When the Ottoman Sultan Selim I conquered Syria and Egypt in 1516/17 , the protective rights over the two holy places passed to him. According to the report of the Meccan historian Qutb ad-Dīn an-Nahrawālī (d. 1582) Selim was first dubbed “servant of the two noble holy places” when he entered Aleppo after the Battle of Marj Dabiq . He is said to have been very pleased about it and to have given the Khatīb , who had dubbed him so, a robe of honor and given generously. The Ottoman sultans after him carried this title until the fall of the empire.

Reactivation of the title under Saudi rule

In 1986 the title of Chādim al-Haramain was reactivated by the kings of Saudi Arabia. The title is important for the religious legitimation of the Saudi ruling house. However, the Arab opponents of the Saudis have often referred to this title in their polemics. For example, Iraqi propaganda under Saddam Hussein in the late 1980s mocked the Saudi ruler, alluding to the newly adopted title Chādim al-Haramain as Chā'in al-Haramain ("traitor of the two holy places").

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ So in Saleh Bin Abdullah Bin Humaid: The two holy mosques during the reign of the servant of the two holy mosques King Fahd bin Abdul-Aziz, on the anniversary of the takeover of power by King Fahd, 1402-1422 , H. Bahadur Press, Mecca, 2004.
  2. ↑ So in ʿAbdallāh ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Āl Suʿūd: Excerpts from the speeches of the keeper of both holy places, King Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. Ministry of Culture and Information, Riyadh, 2007.
  3. ↑ See Hans Wehr : Arabic dictionary for the written language of the present. 5th edition. Harrasowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1985. p. 249b
  4. ↑ See Hans Wehr: Arabic dictionary for the written language of the present. 5th edition. Harrasowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden, 1985. p. 324b
  5. ^ Max van Berchem: Matériaux pour un Corpus inscriptionum Arabicarum. Part II / 1 Syrie du Sud, Jérusalem «Haram» . Institut français d'archéologie orientale du Caire, Cairo, 1927. p. 24. Digitized
  6. ↑ Lewis: Kh ādim al-Ḥaramayn in EI² Vol. IV, pp. 899b-900a.
  7. ↑ al-Qalqašandī: Ṣubḥ al-aʿšā ed. Muḥammad ʿAbd al-Rasūl Ibrāhīm, Dār al-Kutub al-Ḫadīwīya, 14 vols. Cairo 1331-8 / 1913-20. Vol. VI, p. 46. Digitized
  8. ↑ Joseph von Hammer-Purgstall : History of the Ottoman Empire: largely from previously unused manuscripts and archives. Vol. 1. From the establishment of the Ottoman Empire to the death of Selim I: 1300 - 1520 . Hartleben, Pesth, pp. 791f. Digitized
  9. ↑ Muǧīr ad-Dīn al-ʿUlaimī: al-Uns al-ǧalīl bi-tārīẖ al-Quds wa-l-Ḫalīl . Ed. Maḥmūd ʿAuda Kaʿābina. Maktabat Dundais, Hebron / Amman 1999. Vol. II, p. 407. Digitized
  10. ↑ Lewis: Kh ādim al-Ḥaramayn in EI² Vol. IV, p. 900a.
  11. ↑ Qutb ad-Dīn an-Nahrawālī: Kitāb al-Iʿlām bi-bait Allāh al-ḥarām . Ed. F. Desert field. Leipzig 1857. pp. 278f. Digitized .
  12. ↑ See Michael Glünz: The Manifesto of the Islamic Revolution: Ayatollāh Ḫomeinīs message to the Mecca pilgrims of the year 1407/1987 in Die Welt des Islams 33/2 (1993), pp. 235-255. Here p. 247.
  13. ↑ Thomas Koszinowski and Hanspeter Mattes: Middle East Yearbook 1990: Politics, Economy and Society in North Africa and the Near and Middle East . Leske and Budrich, Opladen, 1991. p. 135.