Abdallah Rafael Hernandez Mancha remembers spending his days during the spring of 1989 locked in his room studying for an official exam to become a high school teacher in the public education system of Andalusia, in the south of Spain.
He studied so much that he even went beyond the subjects he had to learn and delved into other fields.
The young Hernandez read the Bible, went through the Spanish dictionary and, one day, started to leaf through the Quran, which fascinated him because of its constant geographical references.
It was at that moment that the young Spaniard made two promises, which he put in writing.
“I said to myself: ‘If I pass the exams, I will become a Muslim.’
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And the second: “If I pass, I will make the pilgrimage to Mecca on horseback, just like the ancient Andalusians did,” Hernandez told Middle East Eye, referring to the Muslims of Spain in the Middle Ages.
Hernandez managed to pass those exams and adopted the Islamic name Abdallah when he converted to Islam, before carrying on with his life for the next 35 years.
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Then, last October, a few weeks after retiring, he decided to fulfil the second promise.
He set off from a small town in Huelva in southern Spain on the back of a mare and headed for Saudi Arabia along with two other pilgrims: Abdelkader Harkassi and Tarek Rodriguez.
Aware of the long and arduous journey they faced, the Spanish pilgrims relied on pure-bred Arabian endurance mares, specially trained for the occasion.
They also took off with five horses, which underwent full check-ups along the entire route, to ensure they could all rest.
“The departure was very emotional, surrounded by our loved ones, by our community, by Spanish Muslims, in a historic place, [the town of] Almonaster la Real, where there is one of the oldest preserved mosques in Spain,” Harkassi told MEE.
The old road to Mecca
There are records from as early as the 11th century of Andalusian pilgrims embarking on long and dangerous journeys to Mecca to perform Hajj.
Most of these journeys began with a crossing of the Strait of Gibraltar into North Africa, where the pilgrims would take a boat to Alexandria, Egypt’s main port.
Once there, they would head down to Cairo, where, after visiting popular mausoleums and mosques, they would join a caravan to set out on the second leg of their journey to Mecca.
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Starting in the 12th century, these journeys to the east even gave rise to a new literary genre known as Rihla (travel, in Arabic), in which personal experiences and anecdotes blended with geographical descriptions of the places that were visited.
The father of the Rihla, and its greatest exponent, was the Andalusian geographer Ibn Jubayr, who became secretary to the governor of Granada before making three trips to the east, the first of which took place between 1183 and 1185.
These travels to Mecca went on after the fall of Al Andalus, from the Christian kingdoms of Castile and the Crown of Aragon, although pilgrims had to pay a departure tax. Most Muslims set out from the ports of Valencia, Barcelona and Mallorca, mainly using trade routes established by Venetian and Genoese navigators, with destinations such as Alexandria and Beirut.
Three rihlas have survived from that period, perhaps the most famous of which is that of Omar Patun, a Muslim from Avila, near Madrid, who recounted in first person and in great detail his long and troubled adventure to Mecca between 1491 and 1495.
As for the Spanish pilgrims who set off on horseback last October, crossing North Africa proved impossible due to the closure of the Moroccan-Algerian border and the insecurity in Libya. So they chose to cross southern Europe instead.
“There were Andalusians who travelled through Europe for reasons like ours – because of wars or conflicts,” Hernandez said.
“Our journey is a great achievement for having managed to ride such a long route on horseback, a route that had not been travelled for more than 500 years.”
Crossing Europe
The Spanish horsemen set off from southern Spain with hardly any resources and no financial funding or contacts of any kind. Yet they wanted to try their luck.
Before they had even made it across Spain, they had already run out of money, mainly because of the costs of food, feeding the horses, and petrol for the assistance car that drove with them.
What then took place is what Hernandez considered the first miracle of the journey.
One Friday, the group was near the village of Buñuel in Navarre, northeast Spain, when a boy saw their car (with writing on it, explaining that they were performing Hajj on horseback) and asked if they were looking for a mosque.
There they met a group of Muslims, mostly day labourers from Morocco. And after telling them their story, they were able to raise over €1,200, which allowed them to carry on.
The pilgrims had been training for three years, but Hernandez admits that the hardest part of the trip was the crossing of the Alps mountain range, between France and Italy, in adverse conditions, heavy snow and the onset of winter.
“The Alps fall into the sea, so they are very difficult to cross,” Hernandez said. “Cars go through tunnels. But of course, horses can’t cross. So, we had to cross through the mountain.”
Once in Italy, another sort of miracle occurred. In Verona, the pilgrims met a Saudi influencer, Abdelrahman al-Mutiri, who, after hearing their story, offered them a caravan in return for the chance to join them. They accepted his offer.
“In the Middle Ages there were inns where you could sleep and where you could leave the horses to rest,” Hernandez explained.
“But now there are gas stations, and it is very difficult to find a place to spend the nights with the horses and to feed them.”
The Saudi influencer also fuelled the group’s popularity among his Muslim audience, and they began to gain thousands of followers online, which would prove crucial later in their journey.
“In Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, in all these [non-Muslim-majority] places where we’ve been, when people hosted us and we said we were Muslims and pilgrims, they were very interested to know more about it. I think that’s another achievement,” Harkassi said.
Through Muslim lands
After trotting through Slovenia and along the coast of Croatia, the Spanish pilgrims had to leave their mares behind due to restrictions in their next two countries: Bosnia Herzegovina and Serbia, which they crossed with horses provided by an equestrian club in Sarajevo.
In Bosnia, though, the group had moved into Muslim-majority territories, and Hernandez said that thanks to the popularity they had already gained, from that moment on they were received everywhere with great enthusiasm. And they lacked for nothing.
In the Serbian province of Sandzak and its Muslim-majority capital, Novi Pazar, Hernandez recalled that people even stuffed money into their boots, jackets and horse saddles.
And a couple who were about to get married offered them their future home so that they would have a place to stay.
“When we got to the house and took off our boots, money was falling from inside; we collected more than €2,000,” Hernandez said.
Bulgaria was the only country the group had to cross by car due to local restrictions, but in Turkey they reunited with the mares and were able to ride them across the country.
In Turkey, the pilgrims travelled through snow and during Ramadan. But Hernandez said that wherever they went, there were always either police officers, neighbours or shepherds ready to offer them food to break their fast.
“Since Turkey we have never cooked again. For four months now, out of seven, we have not cooked because we have been invited [to eat with hosts] every day,” he said.
In Sarajevo the pilgrims were welcomed by the mayor. In Turkey the authorities provided them in advance with all the documentation they needed to cross the country on horseback. They even met the minister of religious affairs, Ali Erbas.
One of the countries Hernandez remembers most fondly, however, was the one that awaited them next: Syria, which the group crossed just three months after the fall of former President Bashar al-Assad.
In this case, the horsemen had to be escorted by members of the Free Syrian Army, already part of the new government, and on one occasion they had to change route because fighting was taking place close to their location.
‘For four months now, out of seven, we have been invited [to eat in a local resident’s house] every day’
– Abdallah Rafael Hernandez Mancha
They also passed near areas that were being swept of mines by Turkish soldiers.
In Syria, the pilgrims were received by the country’s new minister of culture, Mohammed Saleh, as well as the minister of information, Hamza Mustafa.
Still, it was perhaps the Syrian public who left the greatest impression on them: wherever they went they were welcomed with open arms by local residents, who invited them to eat and provided them with accommodation on a daily basis.
“Our arrival was a celebration in a country in ruins, which was very emotional for us,” Hernandez said.
“We have been very moved and very touched by how the Syrian people received us. A country so destroyed… turned to us,” he added.
In Jordan, where the pilgrims braved the desert, the group was already so popular that every few kilometres they would find people waiting to greet them with food – from hummus, olives and bread to stuffed lamb and tea.
“Every few kilometres they had a breakfast for us, which made us move very slowly because we wanted to be nice,” Hernandez said. “They were so nice that they slowed us down.”
Leaving Jordan behind, the horsemen finally entered Saudi Arabia, where the police met them shortly after their arrival to reach an agreement: from then on, they would not continue their journey on horse because of the restrictions during Hajj, but in return the authorities would provide them with everything they needed in the country.
During Hajj season, access to Saudi Arabia, and Mecca in particular, is tightly controlled because the huge crowds of pilgrims can pose a security risk, and travel takes place via closed travel packages.
“They didn’t want 50,000 people coming on horseback next year,” Hernandez joked.
“Once we arrived [in Mecca] – after so many kilometres, after so many changes we experienced, after meeting so many cultures and so many people who have helped us – arriving was very special,” Harkassi recalled.
“Many people, in the Muslim countries where we have been, asked us: ‘But are there Muslims in Spain?’ And I think we have put our community on the map,” he said.
Once Hajj is over, on 9 June, the group will return to Spain by plane, and due to European regulations the horses will have to stay in Saudi Arabia.
“That’s the sad part of the story,” Hernandez said.
“The mares have been the real heroines of the journey.”
