White- robed worshippers from across the world have packed the thoroughfares of Mecca as Islam’s holiest megacity prepares to host the biggest Hajj passage since the coronavirus epidemic.
Banners drinking the faithful, including the first transnational callers since 2019, festooned places and alleys, while fortified security forces patrolled the ancient megacity, motherland of the Prophet Muhammad.
” This is pure joy,” Sudanese pilgrim Abdel Qader Kheder said in Mecca, ahead of the event anticipated to start on Wednesday.
” I nearly can not believe I’m then. I’m enjoying every moment.”
One million people, including,8,50,000 from abroad, are allowed at this time’s Hajj after two times of drastically elided figures due to the epidemic.
At least,650,000 overseas pilgrims have arrived so far in Saudi Arabia to meet on the holy megacity for several days of rituals in which they retrace the Prophet Muhammad’s last passage, the authorities said on Sunday.
Pilgrims must first enter a state of chastity, called ihram, which requires special dress and geste.
Men wear a flawless cloak- suchlike white garment that emphasises concinnity, anyhow of social status or nation. Women must wear loose dresses, also white, exposing only their faces and hands.
Pilgrims aren’t allowed to argue or dispute and are banned from wearing incense, cutting their nails, or trimming their hair or beards.
The first ritual requires walking seven times around the Kaaba, the large black boxy structure at the centre of Mecca’s Grand Mosque.
Made from determinedness and draped in an heavily- exaggerated cloth featuring verses of the Koran, the Kaaba stands nearly 15 metres( 50 bases) altitudinous.
The structure is said to have been first erected by Adam and also rebuilt by Abraham,4,000 times agone.
Pilgrims next walk seven times between two gravestone spots in the synagogue .
They also move on to Mina, around five kilometres( three long hauls) down, ahead of the main ritual of the passage at Mount Arafat.
The climax of the Hajj is the gathering on Mount Arafat, about 10 kilometres( six long hauls) from Mina, where it’s believed that the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final homily.
Pilgrims assemble on the 70- metre-high( 230- bottom) hill and its girding plain for hours of prayers and Koran recitals, staying there until the evening.
After evening pilgrims head to Muzdalifah, half between Arafat and Mina, where they gather several dozen pebbles so they can perform the emblematic ” stoning of the devil”.
The last major ritual of the Hajj is back at Mina, where pilgrims throw seven monuments at each of three huge concrete walls representing Satan.
The ritual is an emulation of Abraham’s stoning of the devil at the three spots where it’s said Satan tried to inhibit him from adhering Allah’s( God) order to immolate his son, Ishmael.
After the first stoning, the Eid al Adha feast of immolation begins, marking the end of the Hajj. Sheep are massacred, in reference to the angel that Allah handed for immolation rather of Ishmael.
Men Also shave their heads or trim their hair while women cut a fingertip- length off their cinches.
The pilgrims can also change back into normal apparel, returning to circumnavigate the Kaaba and complete their gravestone- throwing rituals before heading home.
Source: TRT World
