and Irāk, the pilgrims who reach Medina from Yanbu and go on to
Mecca, and those from all parts of the peninsula. Burckhardt
in 1814 estimated the crowd at Arafa at 70,000, Burton in 1853
at 50,000, ʽAbd el-Razzāk in 1858 at 60,000. This great assemblage
is always a dangerous centre of infection, and the days of Mina
especially, spent under circumstances originally adapted only for a
Bedouin fair, with no provisions for proper cleanliness, and with the
air full of the smell of putrefying offal and flesh drying in the sun,
produce much sickness.
Literature.—Besides the Arabic geographers and cosmographers, we have Ibn ʽAbd Rabbih’s description of the mosque, early in the 10th century (ʽIḳd Farīd, Cairo ed., iii. 362 sqq.), but above all the admirable record of Ibn Jubair (A.D. 1184), by far the best account extant of Mecca and the pilgrimage. It has been much pillaged by Ibn Baṭūta. The Arabic historians are largely occupied with fabulous matter as to Mecca before Islām; for these legends the reader may refer to C. de Perceval’s Essai. How little confidence can be placed in the pre-Islamic history appears very clearly from the distorted accounts of Abraha’s excursion against the Hejāz, which fell but a few years before the birth of the Prophet, and is the first event in Meccan history which has confirmation from other sources. See Nöldeke’s version of Ţabarī, p. 204 sqq. For the period of the Prophet, Ibn Hishām and Wāḳidī are valuable sources in topography as well as history. Of the special histories and descriptions of Mecca published by Wüstenfeld (Chroniken der Stadt Mekka, 3 vols., 1857–1859, with an abstract in German, 1861), the most valuable is that of Azraqī. It has passed through the hands of several editors, but the oldest part goes back to the beginning of the 9th Christian century. Kutbeddin’s history (vol. iii. of the Chroniken) goes down with the additions of his nephew to A.D. 1592.
Of European descriptions of Mecca from personal observation the best is Burckhardt’s Travels in Arabia (cited above from the 8vo ed., 1829). The Travels of Aly Bey (Badia, London, 1816) describe a visit in 1807; Burton’s Pilgrimage (3rd ed., 1879) often supplements Burckhardt; Von Maltzan’s Wallfahrt nach Mekka (1865) is lively but very slight. ʽAbd el-Razzāq’s report to the government of India on the pilgrimage of 1858 is specially directed to sanitary questions; C. Snouck-Hurgronje, Mekka (2 vols., and a collection of photographs, The Hague, 1888–1889), gives a description of the Meccan sanctuary and of the public and private life of the Meccans as observed by the author during a sojourn in the holy city in 1884–1885 and a political history of Mecca from native sources from the Hegira till 1884. For the pilgrimage see particularly Snouck-Hurgronje, Het Mekkaansche Feest (Leiden, 1880). (W. R. S.)
MECHANICS. The subject of mechanics may be divided
into two parts: (1) theoretical or abstract mechanics, and
(2) applied mechanics.
1. Theoretical Mechanics
Historically theoretical mechanics began with the study of practical contrivances such as the lever, and the name mechanics (Gr. τὰ μηχανικά), which might more properly be restricted to the theory of mechanisms, and which was indeed used in this narrower sense by Newton, has clung to it, although the subject has long attained a far wider scope. In recent times it has been proposed to adopt the term dynamics (from Gr. δύναμις force,) as including the whole science of the action of force on bodies, whether at rest or in motion. The subject is usually expounded under the two divisions of statics and kinetics, the former dealing with the conditions of rest or equilibrium and the latter with the phenomena of motion as affected by force. To this latter division the old name of dynamics (in a restricted sense) is still often applied. The mere geometrical description and analysis of various types of motion, apart from the consideration of the forces concerned, belongs to kinematics. This is sometimes discussed as a separate theory, but for our present purposes it is more convenient to introduce kinematical motions as they are required. We follow also the traditional practice of dealing first with statics and then with kinetics. This is, in the main, the historical order of development, and for purposes of exposition it has many advantages. The laws of equilibrium are, it is true, necessarily included as a particular case under those of motion; but there is no real inconvenience in formulating as the basis of statics a few provisional postulates which are afterwards seen to be comprehended in a more general scheme.
The whole subject rests ultimately on the Newtonian laws of motion and on some natural extensions of them. As these laws are discussed under a separate heading (Motion, Laws of), it is here only necessary to indicate the standpoint from which the present article is written. It is a purely empirical one. Guided by experience, we are able to frame rules which enable us to say with more or less accuracy what will be the consequences, or what were the antecedents, of a given state of things. These rules are sometimes dignified by the name of “laws of nature,” but they have relation to our present state of knowledge and to the degree of skill with which we have succeeded in giving more or less compact expression to it. They are therefore liable to be modified from time to time, or to be superseded by more convenient or more comprehensive modes of statement. Again, we do not aim at anything so hopeless, or indeed so useless, as a complete description of any phenomenon. Some features are naturally more important or more interesting to us than others; by their relative simplicity and evident constancy they have the first hold on our attention, whilst those which are apparently accidental and vary from one occasion to another arc ignored, or postponed for later examination. It follows that for the purposes of such description as is possible some process of abstraction is inevitable if our statements are to be simple and definite. Thus in studying the flight of a stone through the air we replace the body in imagination by a mathematical point endowed with a mass-coefficient. The size and shape, the complicated spinning motion which it is seen to execute, the internal strains and vibrations which doubtless take place, are all sacrificed in the mental picture in order that attention may be concentrated on those features of the phenomenon which are in the first place most interesting to us. At a later stage in our subject the conception of the ideal rigid body is introduced; this enables us to fill in some details which were previously wanting, but others are still omitted. Again, the conception of a force as concentrated in a mathematical line is as unreal as that of a mass concentrated in a point, but it is a convenient fiction for our purpose, owing to the simplicity which it lends to our statements.
The laws which are to be imposed on these ideal representations are in the first instance largely at our choice. Any scheme of abstract dynamics constructed in this way, provided it be self-consistent, is mathematically legitimate; but from the physical point of view we require that it should help us to picture the sequence of phenomena as they actually occur. Its success or failure in this respect can only be judged a posteriori by comparison of the results to which it leads with the facts. It is to be noticed, moreover, that all available tests apply only to the scheme as a whole; owing to the complexity of phenomena we cannot submit any one of its postulates to verification apart from the rest.
It is from this point of view that the question of relativity of motion, which is often felt to be a stumbling-block on the very threshold of the subject, is to be judged. By “motion” we mean of necessity motion relative to some frame of reference which is conventionally spoken of as “fixed.” In the earlier stages of our subject this may be any rigid, or apparently rigid, structure fixed relatively to the earth. If we meet with phenomena which do not fit easily into this view, we have the alternatives either to modify our assumed laws of motion, or to call to our aid adventitious forces, or to examine whether the discrepancy can be reconciled by the simpler expedient of a new basis of reference. It is hardly necessary to say that the latter procedure has hitherto been found to be adequate. As a first step we adopt a system of rectangular axes whose origin is fixed in the earth, but whose directions are fixed by relation to the stars; in the planetary theory the origin is transferred to the sun, and afterwards to the mass-centre of the solar system; and so on. At each step there is a gain in accuracy and comprehensiveness; and the conviction is cherished that some system of rectangular axes exists with respect to which the Newtonian scheme holds with all imaginable accuracy.
A similar account might be given of the conception of time as a measurable quantity, but the remarks which it is necessary to make under this head will find a place later.
