The Hajj: Centering the Muslim World

by Greg Noakes

The hajj, or pilgrimage to Mecca, is one of the five pillars of Islam, and so is of immense spiritual and emotional significance to Muslims. It is required of any adult Muslim who has the financial and physical ability to make the journey. One of the world's great religious spectacles and rites, the hajj is, for most Muslims, an event to be dreamed of and savored for a lifetime.

The hajj is performed between the 8th and 13th of the Islamic lunar month of Dhu al-Hijjah, and this year will fall at the end of April on the Western solar calendar. Before arriving in Mecca, the pilgrim enters a state of purification called ihram. The pilgrim bathes, trims the hair and nails, and removes any jewelry and headcovering. Men don two seamless white sheets, one wrapped around the waist and the other draped over one shoulder, and then the pilgrim declares, "Labbayk, Allahuma, labbayk!" (I am at your service, O God, I am at your service!)

The Rites of Pilgrimage

The rites of hajj, which conform to the practices of the Prophet Muhammad, follow a set order and are performed at specific times (the Lesser Pilgrimage, or umrah, can be performed at any time during the year, but is not a substitute for the hajj). On the 8th of Dhu al-Hijjah, the pilgrims move from Mecca to the plain at Mina, where they pass the day and night in contemplation. The myriad white tents of the hajjis arrayed across the land are a breathtaking sight.

The following day, the pilgrims move en masse to Arafat for the "standing," where the hajjis pass the day in prayer, Qur'an recitation and meditation. The standing at Arafat and the visit to the "Mount of Mercy," a rocky outcrop where Muhammad preached his farewell sermon, are the high point of the hajj.

As the sun goes down, the pilgrims travel to Muzdalifa to pass the night. Before sleeping, though, the pilgrims gather a handful of pebbles to be used the following day. During that next day, the pilgrims return to Mina and cast their stones at a set of pillars which represent Satan, symbolically repudiating evil. Mina is also the site of the Eid al-Adha,the Feast of Sacrificewhen animals are ritually sacrificed in an action carried out by Muslims all around the globe during that same day. Afterward, the pilgrims end their state of ihram by removing their hajj clothes, cutting or shaving their hair and bathing.

Back in Mecca, the pilgrims circumambulate the Ka'aba, the cubical building on the site where, Muslims believe, the Prophet Abraham (Ibrahim) and his son, Ishmael (Ismail), built the first structure dedicated to the worship of a single God. Following prayer, the hajj is officially concluded, though most pilgrims stay for several days. During that time, they run seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa, near the Ka'aba, re-enacting the flight of Hagar who, left in the desert alone with her infant son Ishmael, frantically searched for water before the Angel Gabriel (Jibril) led her to the Well of Zamzam, now within the confines of the Grand Mosque. (Pilgrims often return home with bottles of Zamzam water as a token of their pilgrimage.) The pilgrims may also return to Mina or journey north to the city of Medina, where the Prophet Muhammad journeyed during the hijra, or flight from Mecca, and which now contains the Prophet's Mosque and burial place. Before leaving for home, the pilgrim makes a final, farewell circuit around the Ka'aba.

Changing Logistics

Although the pilgrimage rites remain unchanged after 14 centuries, the logistics of the hajj have been transformed dramatically in recent decades. In the past, the pilgrimage would have been performed overland, in some cases requiring several years and financial resources beyond the reach of most Muslims. In the age of jet travel, though, the voyage to Mecca now is measured in terms of hours rather than months, and the relative expense of the pilgrimage also has been reduced. A greater proportion of the world's Muslims are now able to make hajj, with the result that some two million Muslims are expected to perform the rites in Mecca and its environs this year.

The facilities they will encounter are far different than those which existed in the holy city for most of the Islamic period. A large air terminal in the desert outside Jeddah remains deserted for most of the year, but during the days of the hajj it is circled by jetliners arriving at a rate approaching one every two minutes. Hundreds of thousands of disembarking hajjis are processed tbrough the terminal, which is graced with a striking tent-like roofline and innovative open design that have won architectural awards from around the world, before embarking for Mecca.

There the pilgrims will find accommodation and food. Normally a relatively small city, Mecca during the hajj is transformed into a bustling hive of activity. Provision of food, water, housing, sanitation and transportation for the two million temporary visitors is a difficult logistical challenge in and of itselfmatched only by the logistics of the rites of worship themselves.

The Grand Mosque which surrounds the Ka'aba is an engineering marvel and an architectural gem, able to accommodate millions of worshippers at one time within its cavernous halls. In recent decades it has been expanded continuously, greatly increasing its capacity. During Ramadan this year, it was announced that some three million Muslims had crowded the mosque and its surrounding esplanade for evening prayers during the final days of the month of fasting. While this is the central location for the hajj, safe and timely transportation to sites like Mina and Muzdalifa must be provided, as well as accommodation at those sites.

All of these necessities have been met by the government of Saudi Arabia, which has spent vast amounts of money on improvements and extensions to the mosques and other facilities at Mecca and Medina, as well as transit routes and systems linking the hajj sites. Despite these efforts, tragedies involving transport accidents and overcrowding do occur, and officials who oversee the hajj are constantly revising their development plans. One area of recent attention is the sacrifice at Mina. In the past, some of the sacrificed animals were left to rot in the sun due to the surfeit of meat and the inability to transport or preserve it. Now, modern, on-site canning facilities ensure that no meat is wasted. The canned meat is utilized in relief shipments dispatched by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Despite the vast expenditures, Saudi officials consider the money spent on the hajj and the holy places to be well spent. Aside from the considerable religious legitimacy attached to successful administration of the hajj, the Kingdom feels blessed to house and protect the mosques at Mecca and Medina. King Fahd's official title is Khadim al-Haramain, or Custodian of the Two Sanctuaries, reflecting the importance both the Al Saud royal family and the Saudi nation attach to the holy sites.

Centering the Ummah

Although the true significance of hajj is spiritual, it remains an important cultural, social and educational catalyst as well. The aspiration of all Muslims, the pilgrimage serves to bind the world's one billion followers of Islam, in a sense bringing the ummah, or Muslim community, together in one place once a year.

The pilgrimage confirms the unity of that ummah. Hajj witnesses a unique mixture of ethnic, racial, linguistic and national groups. Malcolm X was transformed during his pilgrimage to Mecca when he saw whites and blacks, Arabs and non-Arabs, young and old standing shoulder to shoulder, united by their faith and their performance of the hajj rites. The pilgrimage is a concrete manifestation of the universality of Islam.

The hajj is also a conduit for exchange, whether of goods or of ideas. Many hajjis bring material goods from their home countries to sell during the pilgrimage. In the past this often was done to secure the funds needed to return home. As a result, handicraft techniques and aesthetic designs were interchanged. A Tajik from Central Asia, for instance, might bring a rug to sell in Mecca. The rug could be bought by a North African hajji and transported back to Morocco. There, weavers could inspect,and at times copy,the workmanship and design of fellow craftspeople thousands of miles away. Styles and techniques in art forms as diverse as leatherworking, calligraphy and ceramics were similarly disseminated.

Religious, scientific and literary manuscripts changed hands and traveled in the same manner. With Arabic serving as a lingua franca throughout the Muslim world, the hajj served as an intellectual clearing house of ideas and scholarly materials. Aside from being a center for pilgrimage, Mecca (as well as Medina) also served as a center of education. Throughout the centuries, many of Islam's greatest thinkers traveled to Mecca to perform the hajj, staying on to study with some of the best and brightest teachers in the Muslim world. Again, ideas and opinions were exchanged, bringing intellectual trends from as far afield as South Asia and West Africa into direct contact and resulting in crossfertilization of ideas.

Recent years have seen attempts by the pilgrimage delegations of some nations, notably Iran,to politicize the hajj with demonstrations and distribution of political tracts. With an audience of two million onlookers gathered from around the world, the temptation to try to gain political advantage during the hajj has proven overwhelming for some, but the Saudi authorities have resisted such attempts vigorously. In the past this has led to considerable friction between Riyadh and Tehran, and at one point Iran boycotted the pilgrimage,an extraordinary stepthough more recently an uneasy modus vivendi has been struck between the two countries.

Historical Continuity

While Mecca provides a centerpoint for the contemporary Muslim community (which is reinforced five times every day as Muslims around the world turn to the Ka'aba at prayer time), it also serves as a reminder of the historical continuity of the faith. Muslims believe that Islam, literally submission to the one God, was not only the faith of Muhammad but also the teaching of previous prophets such as Abraham, Moses, David and Jesus. By returning to the site of the "House of God" built by Abraham and Ishmael and commemorating Abraham's willingness to sacrifice that same son with the rites of Eid al-Adha, Muslims reinforce the links which bind them to the earliest monotheism. Visiting the important sites of Muhammad's life in Mecca and Medina reminds Muslims of the last of the prophets, to whom God delivered the Qur'an and who is described in the holy book as "a mercy to the worlds."

Jets and buses have replaced camels and horses as means of transport, the mosques at Mecca and Medina have grown far beyond their original confines and the number of pilgrims performing the hajj has swelled exponentially. Nevertheless, the pilgrimage retains its timeless essence as a confirmation of faith, the fulfillment of a religious duty, and a spiritual journey unlike any other for a fifth of humankind.