Mecca, Saudi Arabia – Enormous crowds of worshippers thronged Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, on Friday for the biggest hajj pilgrimage in years, with more than 2 million expected to brave the scorching Saudi Arabian heat.
In 2019, about 2.5 million people took part. Only 10,000 were allowed in 2020, at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, rising to nearly 59 000 a year later.
The hajj is among the five pillars of Islam and must be undertaken by all Muslims with the means at least once in their lives.
‘Unbelievable feeling’
Travellers from around the world have been pouring into Jeddah’s modernised airport, some of them using streamlined visa services to disembark from planes straight onto buses to their accommodation.
About 24 000 buses will be in service to ferry the pilgrims, as well as 17 trains capable of moving 72 000 people every hour, officials said.
“It is an unbelievable feeling that is very emotional,” Souad bin Oueis, a 60-year-old Moroccan pilgrim, said after arriving on her first visit to Saudi Arabia along with her husband.
This hajj will be the biggest since the requirement for women to be accompanied by male guardians was dropped in 2021.
This year, the maximum age limit has also been scrapped, meaning thousands of elderly will be among those contending with Saudi summer temperatures that are expected to reach 44 degrees Celsius.
The hajj rituals begin late on Sunday at the Grand Mosque in Mecca. The worshippers will sleep in tents on Monday night and spend Tuesday at Mount Arafat, the climax of the hajj, where the Prophet Mohammed is believed to have delivered his final sermon.
After casting pebbles in the “stoning of the devil” ritual on Wednesday, marking the start of the Eid al-Adha holiday, pilgrims return to Mecca to perform a farewell tawaf – circling seven times around the Kaaba.
Heat risks
Mecca pilgrimages are a major source of income for Saudi Arabia, which is embarking on an ambitious plan to overhaul its largely oil-dependent economy. The hajj and year-round umrah rituals generate an estimated $12 billion annually.
An expansion project that involves scaling up infrastructure and transport supporting Mecca and Medina, where two of Islam’s holiest sites are located, is a key part of the economic plan as the kingdom looks to increase visitor numbers.
This year’s summer timing for the hajj, which follows the lunar calendar, will test the endurance of worshippers during the four-day, mostly outdoor ritual.
More than 32 000 health workers will be on hand to help fend off heatstroke, dehydration and exhaustion.
But severe weather is just one of the risks at an event that has been hit by deadly incidents from stampedes to militant attacks.
Just eight years ago in 2015, as many as 2 300 worshippers died in a stampede during the “stoning of the devil” ritual in Mina near Mecca, the worst hajj disaster ever.
More than 700 people died in a notorious attack in 1979, when hundreds of gunmen demanding the abdication of the Saudi royal family barricaded themselves inside the Grand Mosque, taking dozens of pilgrims hostage.
Ahead of the hajj, security forces held a military parade in Mecca, including soldiers in full camouflage holding automatic weapons.
Umer Karim, a doctoral researcher focusing on Saudi foreign policy at Britain’s University of Birmingham, said hosting the hajj is a matter of prestige and a source of political legitimacy for Saudi rulers, the custodians of the holy sites.
The pilgrimage “gives the kingdom and its rulers a huge amount of esteem and prestige, which then becomes a major source of the kingdom’s soft power”.
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Source: AFP
Picture: Pexels
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