religion and cosmology: The Islamic World 851 Fasting (sawm or siyam), the fourth pillar, takes place during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Muslim lunar calendar The Muslim cannot eat or drink during daylight hours for the 30 days of that month The fast ends with a major festival of the Muslim calendar that involves prayer and a feast It is considered especially meritorious to read the entire Koran during the month of fasting Finally, every adult Muslim is expected to make a pilgrimage, or hajj, at least once in a lifetime if possible The hajj is a journey to Mecca and incorporates various activities in and around that town Many of the activities recall actions believed by Muslims to have been done by the patriarch Abraham when he, along with his son Ishmael, founded the Kaaba in the center of Mecca A small stone building in the court of the Great Mosque, the Kaaba is the sacred center of Islam, and Muslims face in its direction during prayer (as indicated by the mihrab in a mosque) Pilgrims perform rituals at the Kaaba, including walking around the building seven times and touching of the black stone lodged in its corner Stories The Muslim imagination developed the religion in many ways during the medieval period Aspects related to the hereafter were popular vehicles for elaboration, especially as they were incorporated into a traditional story about the night journey of Muhammad from Mecca to Jerusalem and his heavenly ascension, understood to have occurred in about the sixth year of his prophetic career Known as The Ascension of the Prophet, these stories, both oral and written, emphasized the qualities of Muhammad as a prophet but also satisfied the popular need to know more about the life to come after the judgment day One example is the very popular work attributed to Ibn Abbas (d 687) but probably dated from the 10th century The story relates that one night Muhammad was taken on the back of a winged horse, called Buraq, from his home in Mecca to Jerusalem, where he ascended a ladder to the worlds above (which are described in the Koran as a canopy over the earth, structured like a tent) As he climbed up through the seven heavens, he met the prophets of the past—Adam, John, Jesus, Joseph, Enoch, Aaron, Moses, and Abraham—who were living in paradise He was also given glimpses of the punishments of hell, featuring endlessly burning fires and various tortures appropriate to the particular crimes committed by people during their lives These images are often understood to be the source of medieval European pictures of the afterlife, having been incorporated into the European imagination through such writers as Dante as a result of Arabic works on the topic being translated into Latin Stories of the prophets of the past were also subject to embellishment by popular preachers as vehicles for moral exhortation Starting with the basic stories recounted in the Koran, preachers added details from the Bible and from medieval Jewish and Christian elaborations Further elaborations emphasized Islamic tenets and the social and historical assumptions of the religion In the most famous example of its type, the book by al-Thalabi (d 1035), commonly referred to simply as The Stories of the Prophets, takes its readers into the world of the past through a narrative about God, the devil, and the prophets who deal with the common aspects of human nature Starting with the creation of the world and ending with the year of the birth of Muhammad, 46 biographies are told, with the Koran forming the basic framework of all the stories Sufism The mystical side of Islam, Sufism, had a significant role in Islamic life in the medieval period Often seen to be a vehicle by which the domination of the legal side of the religion was balanced, Sufism encouraged personal experience of the divine Major early figures capture this experience in two descriptive ways Al-Junayd (d 910) is often credited with establishing a system of mystical speculation in Islam He enunciated the doctrine of fana, the goal of the mystic in which one “dies in one’s self” and is “absorbed” into God Baqa, the continuance, is the existence of the mystic after fana, when he or she lives in God Along with this theory, al-Junayd emphasized the ethical responsibility of experienced mystics to return to community life and fulfill the obligations of Muslim life and to display to their contemporaries the impact of divine experience A contemporary of al-Junayd, al-Hallaj (d 922), was famously condemned to death for blasphemy He proclaimed, “I am the Truth,” suggesting that individuals could recognize their own godlike nature through mystical experience This was taken to mean that al-Hallaj felt himself to be divine When the mystical experience overwhelms the individual self to the point that human existence has no meaning, that Sufi is termed intoxicated, compared with the sober mysticism of al-Junayd, in which life takes on its important ethical value The outcome of this emergence of significant mystics was the institutionalization of Sufi practice, with accomplished and experienced mystics becoming the models and masters of their followers Traditions became established by which religious experiences, under the guidance of the master and his disciples, could be obtained Out of this grew belief in the power of the masters to influence events in the world and in the hereafter Practices emerged that involved the visiting of shrines devoted to individual saints to receive blessings and to pray for marvels or miracles Such acts were deemed inap-