Welcome to Al Ehsan Travel

For 23 years Al Ehsan Travel has been committed to serving the guests of Allah.  Since our start in 1991 and our direct affiliation with the Ministry of Hajj as a certified group, our number one priority has been to ensure the best Hajj and Umrah experience, while keeping the price as affordable as possible.  For the year 2022, we are offering the best Umrah Packages & Hajj Packages ever for accommodations in both premium and affordable hotels in Makkah & Madinah. We do our best to give you the most memorable and personal experience.  Give us a call and we will be more than happy to meet your needs.

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How tech is transforming Saudi’s Hajj travel industry

Hajj Mecca

  • Saudi Arabia wants 6 million Hajj visitors a year by 2030
  • Hajj tourism predicted to be worth $350bn by 2032
  • Tech improving travel, safety and communications for pilgrims

Saudi Arabia’s strong digital infrastructure means it is ready to receive “whatever number of pilgrims and Umrah performers”, according to its director general of passports Sulaiman al-Yahya.

Two million people are expected to converge on Mecca in the next week to complete the Hajj pilgrimage.

By 2030 the kingdom is committed to tripling this number and welcoming six million pilgrims a year as part of its Vision 2030 programme, propelling the kingdom’s Hajj tourism market value to more than $350 billion by 2032.

This growth has provided Hajj planners with a logistical challenge that is increasingly being solved by a host of emerging technologies including artificial intelligence, augmented reality, the metaverse, robots and drones.

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  • The Gulf must pair its digitalisation goals with cybersecurity
  • Saudi flight bookings above pre-Covid levels 

Controlled bookings

This year the Saudi Ministry of Hajj and Umrah has only allowed bookings through an online portal named Nusuk, which replaced an existing platform, Motif, last year.

The service allows pilgrims coming from more than 58 countries to reserve, pay online and choose services such as housing, catering, flights and transportation.

“Having such tools will assist in forecasting revenues, understanding the tax contribution, pilgrim needs and how to better correlate how much investment is needed and where it should be invested to boost performance and experience,” said Mohsin Tutla, chairman of the board of directors at the World Hajj & Umrah Care Foundation. 

“This leads to making the sector self-sustainable without the need of large subsidies from the Saudi government.”

Before and on arrival

Saudi Arabia’s Makkah Route initiative aims to make it easier and more efficient for pilgrims to complete the necessary travel procedures before they leave their own countries.

First they apply online for and are then issued with an electronic visa, and then they must verify their identification and health requirements electronically.

Passport controls at the departure airport are streamlined and luggage is coded, sorted and then delivered to their accommodation in Saudi Arabia.

First launched as part of Saudi Arabia’s Pilgrim Experience Program, the Makkah Route Initiative is now being implemented in Morocco, Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey and Ivory Coast.

Meanwhile, official Hajj operator Muslim Tour is using AI-based technology for its Russian pilgrims travelling to Mecca and Medina.

Its Smart ID Engine allows documents to be scanned and processed automatically. It has helped more than 3,000 customers this year.

CEO Ali Ibragimov said it “noticeably simplifies” processes by extracting data from photos, scanned images of passports and text messages and entering them into the company’s systems.

Boosting safety and communications

To improve safety at all Hajj sites, more than 100 pieces of back-up and disaster recovery equipment have been installed, with over 120 field technicians allocated by Saudi information and communications tech company TAWAL. 

More than 500 sites have also been modernised to cater to increased traffic, while 300 have been upgraded to meet customers’ 5G demands.

Jad Haddad, head of digital practice for India, the Middle East and Africa at management consultancy Oliver Wyman, said smart crowd management would mean more streamlined event operations and less overcrowding.

He said it would also allow for optimised services based on real-time insights and improved responsiveness to incidents and emergencies. 

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The Presidency of the Affairs of the Two Holy Mosques has also introduced a guiding robot to help pilgrims in 11 languages: Arabic, English, French, Russian, Persian, Turkish, Malay, Urdu, Chinese, Bengali and Hausa.

A robot will also distribute copies of the Quran to worshippers as they finish their Hajj journey in Mecca.

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Al Noor Travels Hajj and Umrah Service is a trusted travel agency specializing in organizing seamless and spiritually fulfilling journeys for Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages.

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About Al-FalahTours & Travels

Your journey of self-purification begins here.

Our legacy of helping Muslims in performing their obligatory religious duty Hajj, and non-obligatory religious duty Umrah, goes back to over two decades, when the visionary Haji SYED TANWEERULLAH INAMDAR laid the foundation of Al-FALAH Tours & Travels in 2006. Since our inception, every year we have enabled thousands of pilgrims to successfully fulfill their promise to Allah. Our expert team of experienced professionals in India and Saudi Arabia are committed towards ensuring that every aspect of this holy pilgrimage is executed flawlessly, and the pilgrim is in a relaxed state of mind during the sacred journey.

At Al-FALAH Tours & Travels, we pride ourselves in providing excellent service and focusing only on one goal: your absolute comfort. We are recognized by the Government of India and the Government of Saudi Arabia for our commitment of delivering an exceptional experience for pilgrims who perform Hajj as well as Umrah with us.

Based upon the tour package that you select, we provide you with luxurious accommodation, which is closest to the places of worship during your period of stay in Makkah, Madinah and Mina and Arafat. This makes it easier for you to perform your religious duty in comfort. We are renowned for serving delicious food during Hajj, where we offer you a variety of dishes so that you are fully nourished and discharge your religious obligation smoothly. For transporting you between different points during the pilgrimage, we use comfortable buses with wide seats.

For those pilgrims who want to perform their Hajj and Umrah in absolute comfort at a price that justifies the premium facilities we offer, Al-FALAH Tours & Travels is their first choice. We look forward to providing exceptionally comfortable service to Allah's guests in the Holy Land.

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A new Hajj booking system leaves tour operators out in the cold

Pilgrims must now book travels via a new online portal which works on a lottery system, cutting out many agents.

Muslim pilgrims pray around the Kaaba

As foreign Hajj pilgrims return to Mecca following a two-year absence, the global industry surrounding the annual holy event in the Islamic calendar faces an uncertain future after new rules caused financial and logistical chaos for many travellers.

Last month, weeks before the start of Hajj, Saudi Arabia launched a new online portal, Motawif, via which all pilgrims from Europe, the Americas and Australia must now book using a lottery system. This means longstanding tour operators in those nations could be cut out, even after taking bookings this year.

Keep reading

In pictures: hajj in mecca during the covid pandemic, saudi arabia sets limit of 1m hajj pilgrims this year, saudi arabia receives 1st foreign hajj pilgrims since covid began, saudi arabia eases mask mandate as first hajj pilgrims arrive.

On average, United Kingdom-based travel operators organise trips for about 20,000 – 25,000 pilgrims every year, but many of them were only informed of the dramatic changes at the same time as the public.

Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Hajj and Umrah said it had taken the measures to make access easier, keep numbers manageable and fight potential fraud by disreputable agents, claiming an automated, one-stop shop would streamline and safeguard the visa, flight and accommodation processes.

But last week there was mass confusion as many British, European and North American Muslims were left stranded at airports, turned away at their destinations, complained of prices jumping at the last minute, a lack of facilities for disabled and elderly pilgrims, and in some cases, having to share hotel rooms with strangers.

“The Saudi Arabians made a very late and very quick decision, which affected us no doubt”, said Mohammad Arif of Haji Tours in Manchester, a travel agency with franchises across the UK specialising in pilgrimage packages to Mecca and Medina.

“I am not questioning the decision but simply the length of warning. We were only told about the booking system at the same time as everyone else – even though we were an approved company,” he told Al Jazeera.

He said that despite having to shuffle some of his customers into the Motawif system, he was still involved in helping some of them. “I had to ensure wheelchairs for an elderly couple, and people to push them, they’re not set up for that yet.”

“We’ll be thankful to Saudi Arabia if we somehow remain part of the Hajj process from the UK, but we have had to act in a rush.”

The British Labour Party politician Yasmin Qureshi, chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Hajj and Umrah, said she has been in contact with the Saudi government over the rigmarole facing pilgrims from the UK.

She told Al Jazeera: “Despite writing to them many times we’ve eventually heard back that the Saudi government has sent a team to Britain to deal specifically with helping those going to Hajj, and we have some help at the other end at the British consulate general in Jeddah.”

Digital age

The digital move has been coming for some time, says Seán McLoughlin, Professor of the Anthropology of Islam at the University of Leeds. He told Al Jazeera: “The Motawif system is essentially a third generation of Hajj tour-related business.

“You had independent travellers in the West from the ‘60s onwards after mass migration from Asian and African countries with large Muslim communities, then around the late 1990s – 2000s you started getting bespoke Hajj tour operators in Europe and beyond, and now you have the leap to online.” Since 2006, Hajj visits could only be booked via licensed agents.

McLoughlin has been studying British Muslims’ experiences of the Hajj since the late 1990s and is the author of the report, Mapping the UK’s Hajj Sector: Moving towards communication and consensus (2019). He continued: “Saudi Arabia has been trying to develop a form of religious tourism since the 1990s, and what’s happening now has to be seen in terms of that.

“Though it seems this move may have come about suddenly, it has been on the horizon for some time, and many tour operators probably sensed that but perhaps didn’t know what form it might take.”

The main issue for Haji Tours’ Arif was that as soon as it was announced Hajj was back on, his company started taking bookings, but then he had to refund or rebook many of his clients at the last minute so they could use the new, official channels.

“We repaid any booking deposits, even if money was still owed to us further down the line,” he said, adding that he has sold off some of his property to help pay the refunds. “As our clients are good to us and we want to be good to them, and we have always had good relations with our Saudi partners.

“But you cannot organise a Hajj trip on short notice, you need time, so we reinstated our systems months ago after COVID, such as the apartments we always use in Mecca and Medina – we have used the same people for over 10 years. We were ready as soon as we knew Hajj was on again.”

Global turmoil, uncertainty

The turmoil has been felt across the Hajj tour industry globally, with many now facing uncertainty and in extreme cases, a potential end to their business , and in a fragile situation as they carefully negotiate with Saudi officials.

The UK trade association, Licensed Hajj Organisers, in a statement to Al Jazeera said: “Anything we say could be taken out of context and could be considered biased and we do not want to bring Hajj into disrepute.

“We respect the fact that KSA [the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] is a sovereign country and it has its own rules and regulations which are in place to support its vision of empowering its own citizens. Our thoughts and prayers are with all pilgrims and especially with those from non-Muslim countries.”

There is no question that Riyadh’s Ministry of Hajj is acting in anything other than good faith as it irons out wrinkles to the Motawif system. But, several people and groups approached by Al Jazeera were reluctant to comment or be named, in case they were seen to be criticising Saudi officials.

However, even a week after Hajj began, the tone has changed a little, observed McLoughlin. “I think some of that initial reticence has turned into more open discussion, in that the operators see they can push back a bit and the Saudis are slowly taking on board what they say.”

New restrictions

The lottery system is designed to keep numbers down to one million or under, by comparison with 2019 when 2.5 million Muslims made the journey for Hajj before the coronavirus pandemic hit. But the scheme for 2022 bars those over 65 years old and any Muslim who has completed Hajj in the last five years.

This is obviously bad news for elderly Muslims who have waited, and saved, a lifetime to perform Hajj in their autumn years, but Arif hopes Saudi officials will learn and adapt from how things play out this year.

He said: “Let’s see what feedback we get, that will help the Saudi officials and our industry understand how the future will look. It’s for many Muslims something they have saved for their whole lives, and something they will do only once, so they want it to be perfect.

“Part of the issue is that every Muslim going to Hajj has unique needs, and the online system sometimes may not be able to accommodate that. This is why the bespoke service that Hajj tour operators offer has become so important.”

As well as expanding into personalised high-end Umrah tours – a non-mandatory, smaller pilgrimage that can be undertaken at any time – that personal element may well be a saving grace for the industry, said McLoughlin. “One of the many potential futures for Hajj agents may well be to sell their skills back to the Saudis.”

Parliamentarian Qureshi said the switch to Motawif had been done too rashly, and will have a permanent effect on the Hajj sector in the UK. “They’ve been destroyed, in the UK alone, around 200 or more good operators have had their livelihoods destroyed.”

From caravans to markets, the hajj pilgrimage has always included a commercial component

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Assistant Professor of HIstory, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Disclosure statement

Noorzehra Zaidi does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

University of Maryland, Baltimore County provides funding as a member of The Conversation US.

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Large numbers of people gathered around the Kabba in Mecca.

In early June 2022, Saudi Arabia announced a hajj “lottery” for Western pilgrims that made it mandatory for people from Europe, the Americas and Australia to apply for visas through a random draw through the Saudi government-backed website . This new website also offered customized and VIP packages while attempting to replace the services that tour agencies had offered for decades.

This year, an estimated 1 million people will perform the hajj, which is considered one of the five pillars in Islam. Under the lottery, only 50,000 permits were allowed from these 50 countries, compared with 25,000 for U.K. Muslims alone in previous years.

The resulting chaos left both pilgrims and travel agencies frustrated. Many Muslims who had already made their plans found they could not rebook under the new plan because of malfunctioning websites , among other issues. Several among those who were able to arrive in Saudi Arabia found that the hotel rooms they had paid for were no longer available or were double-booked .

The impact extends beyond individual pilgrims. Tour agencies will potentially lose out on thousands of dollars in revenue per prospective pilgrim. The cost of hajj packages has been rising for many years across the globe. For pilgrims leaving from the United States, trips can range between US$12,000 and $20,000 . Cutting out travel agencies that function as middlemen might help reduce these costs. But under the new system, the money will be channeled to the Saudi government, which aims to decrease its dependence on oil revenue through an increase in tourism activities . This has reignited an ongoing debate on the commercialization of the hajj under Saudi Arabia’s influence.

While Saudi Arabia sought to cut out the Western tour agencies reaping profit from hajj, their own offerings outlined “silver,” “gold” and “platinum” packages, boasting of “ luxurious services,” five-star stays in Mecca and Medina, and “superior camping spots equipped with excellent facilities and modern furniture .”

The current changes to the hajj system are just one example of centuries of economics mixing with tradition. Generally, pilgrims try to emulate the hajj rituals in the order of the Prophet Muhammad’s own last pilgrimage before his death . Those rituals emphasize the cleansing of the soul, detachment from worldly concerns and rejection of status distinctions among Muslims, symbolized by the donning of the white garments that all pilgrims wear . Pilgrims continue to wear these robes in the service of these goals, but they also travel to the various sites in luxurious high-speed trains and buses.

In the past, too, the commercial, technological and secular aspects of the hajj have been a topic of much debate about whether they change the spiritual nature of the pilgrimage. As a scholar of pilgrimage, ritual and Islam , I know that the focus on commerce and profits has been part of the long history of the hajj.

Early roots of trade and commerce

Across religious traditions, pilgrimages have always had a commercial component. From pilgrimage caravans and markets that grow around religious sites to the gifting of relics and souvenirs, religion and commerce have been deeply linked .

The hajj is no different. As F.E. Peters, an eminent scholar of Islamic studies, noted in his 1994 significant study on the hajj, the Quran itself acknowledges that Muslims were permitted to indulge in commerce around the pilgrimage: Verse 2:198 in the Quran says, “There is no blame on you for seeking the bounty of your Lord during this journey.” Quranic commentaries have explained this verse to mean that Islam allows commercial activity before and after the days of hajj rituals.

As Islam spread, so did the commerce. While the narrow set of ritual acts of hajj remained, the total pilgrimage experience was shaped by business. For centuries, major overland caravan routes traveled through Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad, with merchants attaching themselves to these caravans.

Traders targeted the pilgrims as consumers, and many pilgrims themselves engaged in trade to pay their way. As traveling overland for the hajj journey could take up to two years , pilgrims traded fruits, wines, silk, carpets and other items. They purchased goods such as coffee and pearls for their return journey .

A changing world, a changing hajj

The evolution of technology and means of travel inevitably brought new economic considerations into the organization of the hajj. The invention of the steamship was central to the development of mass pilgrimage to Mecca in the 19th century – the total number of pilgrims per year rose from an estimated 112,000 participants in 1831 to some 300,000 in 1910 .

European liner companies controlled major pilgrim sea routes, linking hajj to imperial business opportunities. In 1886, the British government called in the famed Thomas Cook & Son, the original package holiday entrepreneurs, to become official travel agents of the hajj .

The use of a for-profit tourism company to regulate the hajj may have seemed a new development, but agents and intermediaries had been central to the process for centuries. The “mutawwifin,” the hereditary guilds of pilgrimage guides, provided pilgrims with guidance in carrying out the rituals of the hajj and were central to Mecca’s government and its economy .

Over the centuries, these local guides would develop contacts in foreign lands, encouraging Muslims to perform the pilgrimage. In addition to linguistic and ritual guidance, the mutawwifin would also arrange meals, lodgings and tents – acting in ways that were similar to modern-day tour operators .

The modern era

The steamship was just one technological innovation that altered the hajj landscape into a more commercial venture. At the turn of the 20th century, Sultan Abdul Hamid II of the Ottoman Empire was an adamant promoter of the construction of the Hejaz Railway , meant to establish a connection between Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.

Proponents of the railway argued that it would both significantly improve conditions for pilgrims on the overland routes and help the establishment of commerce and trade .

The establishment of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in 1932 and the eventual replacement of shipping and rail with air transport transformed the nature of the hajj further. The new Saudi state adhered to the doctrine of Wahhabism , an Islamic reform movement originating in the 1700s that rejected all forms of innovations outside of the Quran and the traditions of the Prophet Muhammad in his time.

Yet despite this condemnation of innovation, the Saudi government has overseen decades of commercial development of the hajj, encouraging the tourism atmosphere and deriving significant profits from the obligatory pilgrimage.

Commerce or politics?

Two men dressed in loose white garments sitting on top of a hill, while multitudes of people are gathered below.

While the hajj has historically been linked to commerce, pilgrims of late have expressed dissatisfaction with the overt emphasis on the touristic experience and the sense that it is now diminishing the spiritual nature of the pilgrimage.

Indeed, commercial revenues from the hajj remain a contested and even a political topic. In 2018, Yusuf al Qaradawi, a prominent Muslim Brotherhood cleric based in Qatar, issued a fatwa calling for limiting spending on pilgrimage. “Seeing Muslims feeding the hungry, treating the sick and sheltering the homeless are better viewed by Allah than spending money on the hajj and umrah every year,” he declared. This statement was viewed as an attempt to undermine Saudi Arabia by discouraging Muslims from performing the pilgrimage, as the revenues go to the government.

Al Qaradawi’s fatwa drew ire from certain circles, as all Muslims who are financially and physically capable must attempt to complete the hajj, regardless of any geopolitical sentiment toward Saudi Arabia. Yet there is no doubt that the current hajj has refocused attention on whether the business of hajj remains in line with the original allowance to “seek bounty” during the pilgrimage to Islam’s holiest sites.

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Al Yarmook Hajj Umrah & Travel is a UAE Auqaf KSA Hajj mission and IATA approved tour operator. We Endeavour to provide an honest and quality Hajj Umrah and Travel service. Our Network is well established UAE wide agent network and offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah Al Ain and Musaffah. We are geared towards making this auspicious and spiritual journey of a lifetime, a one that will Insha Allah Change your life for the better forever. Our team in both the UAE and Saudi Arabia is totally focused on ensuring your trip runs as smoothly as possible and your Hajj an Umrah are followed in the ways shown by our beloved prophet Muhammed (SAW). Our staff and organizers are experts in organizing Hajj & Umrah for groups and individuals. Our aim is to have the honor of serving you as a guest of Allah to the two Holy Mosques, and assisting each and every pilgrim to have a comfortable, trouble free and safe Umrah or Hajj journey. We provide a comprehensive range of services including visa, flights, meals, internal transportation, ziyarath tours and hotels to accommodate all types of passengers. Al Yarmook's Umrah packages, which range from 5-Star Umrah deals to budget Umrah tours, have evolved from years of experience and dedication, and through the valued feedback of our previous customers.Accompanied at all times by our experienced team and assisted by our Saudi partners, we aim to provide a reliable and honest service based on the authentic teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah.

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We provide a comprehensive range of Hajj & Umrah services including visa,transportation, accommodation and ziyaarat tours to all types of passengers.We have evolved from years of experience and dedication, and through the valued feedback of our previous customers., We aim to have the honour of serving pilgrim as a guest of Allah to the two Holy Mosques and provide a reliable and honest service based on the authentic teachings of the Qur’an and Sunnah.

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We provide a complete UAE Visa service for different nationals wishing to travel to UAE, saving you time, effort and money. Dubai Visit Visa, Dubai Transit Visa can be applied by the customers according to their requirements. We Provide 30 Days and 90 Days Tourist Visas and 90 Days Visit Visa.When you want to apply for visit visa or tourist visa, please email the visitor's passport copy, face photo & your mobile number to [email protected] and we will get back to you very soon.

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Unesco social media, the hajj pilgrimage routes: the darb zubaydah (saudi arabia).

The Tentative Lists of States Parties are published by the World Heritage Centre at its website and/or in working documents in order to ensure transparency, access to information and to facilitate harmonization of Tentative Lists at regional and thematic levels.

The sole responsibility for the content of each Tentative List lies with the State Party concerned. The publication of the Tentative Lists does not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever of the World Heritage Committee or of the World Heritage Centre or of the Secretariat of UNESCO concerning the legal status of any country, territory, city or area or of its boundaries.

Property names are listed in the language in which they have been submitted by the State Party

Description

The yearly Islamic pilgrimage ( hajj ) to the Holy city of Makkah is one of the five pillars of Islam and one of the most important and most ancient religious pilgrimages in the world. Until today, millions of Muslim pilgrims visit Makkah every year to accomplish this religious duty. For centuries, every year, Muslim pilgrims undertook long distance journeys by well-established routes to reach the Holy City of Makkah. Some of the major routes crossed the Arabian Desert and followed traditional routes. Pilgrimage routes were not only religious axes but also commercial routes favouring movement across the ancient world, and the cultural and commercial exchanges with continuity over a long period of time. The hajj land routes leading to Makkah from the neighbouring countries materialize on the land of Arabia this centuries-old and deeply rooted cultural and religious tradition and constitute one of the most important material vestiges of the Islamic civilization in Saudi Arabia. They perfectly embody the concepts of “heritage route” that is based on the ancestral dynamics created through the Islamic religious faith shared by a large set of human groups and societies, at the origin of a sustainable and continuous civilization in a large geographical space and along historical time. The hajj routes have a worth over and above the sum of the elements making them up and highlight exchange and dialogue between countries and regions in a multi-dimensional way, with trade and administration adding to their primary religious purpose. The Arabian Peninsula, and its Holy Islamic Places, were at the heart of a large network of routes that converged to and crossed Arabia, in connection with a large set of surrounding regions. A series of hajj routes developed and thrived in different historic moments, adapting to the evolving political conditions and the rise and fall of successive Islamic empires. Early Muslim historians and geographers give details of major roads, linking Makkah with Yemen, Oman, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. These roads initially followed former pre-Islamic trade routes, but progressively evolved from their pre-Islamic antecedents to meet the new needs related to the Islamic pilgrimage. The pilgrimage routes formed also vital arteries of communication for the soldiers, administrators, and tax collectors of the Muslim states.

The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah

The main historical pilgrimage routes that have left significant remains during their use fully correspond to the notion of a transnational series. The Darb Zubaydah, linking the Iraqi city of Kufa to Makkah, bears witness to dedicated and ambitious infrastructures investments which correspond to a historical cultural route of outstanding universal value. The nomination of the other transnational routes converging to Makkah — including the Syrian and the Egyptian ones already on the Saudi Tentative List — will convey the full significance of this ancient regional network facilitating the Islamic pilgrimage. The present property, therefore, should be understood as a first element of a broader ensemble of “Hajj Pilgrimage Routes” to be followed by additional transnational modules presenting tangible vestiges of other Islamic pilgrimage routes.

The road that connected Makkah to the Iraqi cities of Kufa and Baghdad during the Abbasid period is known as the Darb Zubaydah (Zubaydah’s trail) after Zubaydah bint Jafar, wife of the Abbasid Caliph Harun Al-Rashid, who supported charitable works on the numerous stations along the trail. It was the most important hajj route during the Abbasid Caliphate, between 750 to 850 CE, a period renowned as a golden age of Muslim civilisation. At its peak of prosperity, markers and milestones were installed along the route that was provided with wells, pools, dams, palaces, houses, and partially paved to facilitate the passage of pilgrims. 27 major stations and 27 substations have been identified. The Abbasid Caliphate — which reigned over a vast empire stretching from North Africa to the western borders of China from the late 8 th to early 10 th centuries — acted as the decisive trigger of the development and full exploitation of the route’s potential.

In 751, the first Abbasid Caliph, Abu Al-Abbas, began to organise improvements on the Iraq-Makkah road ordering the laying of new milestones and fire-signals, as well as the construction of rest-houses/forts ( qusur ) for the pilgrims, and work on the road continued during Al-Mansur’s long reign (754-775). The success of Iraqi agricultural development during the early Abbasid period enabled an unprecedented economic exploitation of the land at the outset of the Caliphate of Al-Rashid. This spawned the growth of urban centres and a concomitant increase in the prosperity of the Iraqis. The flourishing Abbasid economy greatly increased the numbers of people possessing sufficient resources to make the pilgrimage, and the volume of pilgrim traffic exerted new pressures on the limited water and food resources along Arabia’s desert tracks and even in Makkah itself. Darb Zubaydah aimed at providing the masses of pilgrims with the necessary facilities and water supplies. Earlier construction on the Iraq-Makkah road were planned with mounted pilgrims in mind, with stations and wells placed at intervals suited to the pace of donkeys, horses, and camels. New mid-way stations were needed to cater for pedestrian pilgrims, and Zubaydah personally undertook the expense of building many of these intermediate rest stops. Building on the Darb Zubaydah also became a means for powerful and wealthy individuals to compete in charity. Rest houses, wells and cisterns were named after their sponsors, fostering a real competition among wealthy donors. In the century after her death, many shelters, hostels, wells, and reservoirs on the Kufa-Makkah road were known by the name ‘ Zubaydah ’ or ‘ Umm Ja`far’ , amply indicating the extent of her constructions and renovations, and the sheer number of these stations likely explains how the whole network of roads was given her name.

The Arabian Desert preserves some unique specimens of architecture and infrastructural planning that show the variety and skills of classical Muslim building techniques from Morocco to Turkestan. The milestones, road-markers, road pavements and waterworks are easily identifiable as the works of Abbasid workers and are an impressive feat of engineering and central planning which reveals how well architects, engineers, and bureaucrats more than a millennium ago tamed the Arabian Desert in the name of the hajj.

In the 10 th century, the break in Meccan/Iraqi communication affected the ability of Iraqi and Persian Muslims to make the pilgrimage, leading to the progressive decline and separation of Arabia from the mainstream culture of the central Islamic lands. In the 11 th century, the Darb Zubaydah was partially revitalised, but it never recovered the levels of its first flowering in the 8 th century, as by the 11 th century the Muslim world had changed dramatically from the early Abbasid days of Caliphal splendour in Baghdad. The decline of Iraq sounded the death knell for the Darb Zubaydah. The last organized pilgrimage convoy along this route was carried out by Abbasid Caliph in 1243 CE. In the following centuries, the trail lost its importance and was almost completely abandoned by pilgrims and travellers who forged new routes to Makkah in the following centuries.

This nomination is the first step of a more ambitious long-term program that aims at inscribing other hajj pilgrimage routes to create a strong multi-national World Heritage network of Islamic Pilgrimage Cultural Routes in the coming years.

Name(s) of the component part(s)

Description of the component part(s).

The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah is a transnational nomination jointly presented by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Republic of Iraq. It comprises a series of key elements and stations dating from the Abbasid period, that materialise the 1,300 km-long route linking the town of Kufa in Iraq with Makkah. The segment of the Darb Zubaydah located in present-day Iraq covers approximately 1/5 th of the total length of the route, while the other 4/5 th are located in present-day Saudi Arabia. The property counts 13 sites, four in Iraq and nine in Saudi Arabia, offering a complete overview of the ensemble of the technical and architectural features that equipped this extraordinary hajj route. The nine Saudi elements of the series are briefly presented below.

Al-Thulaimiya Pool / Al-Haytham

Al-Thulaimiya is described by several Islamic geographers. Al-Harbi mentions it as a station established by Zubaydah and records a reservoir with a misfat (settling tank), a mosque, and other structures. This station lies ca 10 km from al-Qa’, near the present border between Saudi Arabia and Iraq. The site displays a very well-preserved circular basin, which stands out for its dimensions with a diameter of 32 m. It is made of two layers of walls, with a 1.6 m thick internal wall. The basin is equipped with a 6.5 m large staircase to access the water more easily.

Al-Jumaimiyah

Al-Jumaymah is a pilgrim station situated in a flat area about 14 km east of Rafha in Saudi Arabia. The site includes a square rainfed basin, a dry dug well, and remains of old foundations. The basin, perfectly preserved and in good conditions, measures 30 x 30 m for a depth of 3.45 m. The pond is carefully designed and very well constructed, eleven flights of steps located in the middle of the eastern wall descend to its bottom. 1 km South are found the remains of a rectangular building which could be a fortress or a caravanserai. The site was visited by several European travellers in the 19 th and early 20 th centuries. It was said that in February 1910, the water contained in the basin was enough for 12,000 men for several days.

The archaeological remains of the pilgrim station of Zabalah are still clearly visible, proving its importance in the past. Arab historians record that at Zabalah water was available in great quantity, and the settlement, where many Arabs used to gather to trade with pilgrims during the Hajj season. had an inhabited fortress and a mosque. Located some 38 km south of Rafha, it is one of the largest stations on the pilgrim road covering an area of 2x1 km. In the northern part of the station, in the wadi, are found three water tanks. The first from the north, measuring 40 x 45 m, has been restored by the Ministry of Agriculture in concrete and cement. In the wadi, are also found hundreds of wells were dug very deep in the solid ground. Some of them are still used by herdsmen and Bedouins for their livestock. South of the wadi, in a commanding position, stand the ruins of a square fortress measuring approximately 35 x 35 m, with a round tower in each corner and one in the middle of each wall. The fort is surrounded by a spacious court which is also enclosed by a wall. On the northern side of the fort are the ruins of houses and other foundations.

Stretch of the paved route between Buraykat al-‘Ashshar and Birkat al-‘Ara’ish

Road infrastructure constitutes a major achievement of the Darb Zubaydah, and bears witness of the efforts paid to shape the hostile environment and make it compatible with needs of the pilgrims. The soft sand of the Nefud desert represented a significant obstacle that necessitated pavement to save the pilgrims from the difficulties of having to drag their feet out of the soft sand with every step. Modern surveys on the approximately 40 km-stretch between Buraykat al-Ashshar and Birkat al-‘Ara’ish have uncovered extant pavements across the sand dunes at variable widths of two to four meters. This stone paved section of Darb Zubaydah illustrates the enormous effort of the Abbasid period workers to drag and set slabs of stone into the desert floor across the Nafud Desert. The feeding and watering of the large worker gangs that carried out this hard task over long periods of construction represented a serious logistic challenge.

Located halfway between Kufa and Makkah, and close to the crossroads of the roads leading to Madinah and to Makkah, the oasis of Fayd was at the most strategic location of the Darb Zubaydah. It attracted pilgrims and merchants who converged to this oasis for more than five centuries, as attested by famous Arab travellers. In the early period of the Abbasid caliphate, Fayd was one of the most important and strategically located stations on the Darb Zubaydah and was the main seat for the administrators of the road during the pilgrimage season. The pilgrims used to take advantage of its position midway on the road from Kufa to Makkah by using it as a storage point for food and other supplies intended for use on the return journey. There is evidence that Fayd was already important prior to the Abbasid period and even before the Islamic era. Its fortress was also well known and described by early Muslim geographers.  In 1327 CE, Ibn Battuta visited Fayd and described a fortified town with a large fortress whose prosperity depended on the trade with the pilgrims. The monuments of the ancient station lie about 1.5 km north of modern Fayd. The fort has been severely affected as the inhabitants re-used its stones for the walling of their gardens. It is thought that the fort consisted of several stories. and there seems to have been a tower in each corner. To the west of the fort is the old settlement of Fayd that counts many ancient wells scattered among the old houses, around the fort, and in the small valley east of the village. They were dug deep into the solid rock and lined with stone. There are two main quadrangular reservoirs: one SE of the fort (about 35 x 35 m), and one north of the village. Both are filled with sand, but their walls are still discernible. The original track of the Pilgrim Route passed 2 km SE of Fayd. This portion of the road, 18 m wide, has been cleared with the rocks piled on both its sides as low walls.

Ma’dan An-Neqrah lies in a flat agricultural area north of the mountain known as Jabal Ma’dan. The history of the village is intrinsically related to the exploitation of ancient mines, and the extraction of copper, but Neqrah also occupied a relevant space in the development of the Darb Zubaydah. It sits at the crossroads of the paths leading to Madinah and to Makkah respectively: one road in the direction of As-Asilah towards Madinah, and the other to the station of Al-Mughithah towards Makkah. Historically, the station was equipped with a palace and a mosque (built by Khalisa, the maid of Zubaydah), two pools, and eight road markers: two for entering, two for exiting, two in the direction of Al-Basri road and two in the direction of the road to Madinah. The historical site of Neqrah bears witness of its multifaceted past reflected in the spatial distribution of its activities: mining activities south of the village, vestiges of pilgrimage utilities (particularly the Aljfnyh Pool), and facilities deployed to ease pilgrims’ journey (road markers, palace and water facilities).

Al-Rabadhah

The Caliph Umar Ibn al-Khattab held Rabadhah as a state grazing reserve for the state’s animals which came into the treasury by way of tax. During the period of the Caliph Uthman Ibn Affan, Rabadhah became the refuge of the Prophet’s companion Abu Dharr al-Ghifari who died there in 32 AH (652 CE). In Abbasid times, it was a prosperous pilgrim station inhabited by Bedouins, and supplied with accommodation and watering facilities. Al-Harbi reports that there was a fortress, two mosques and two reservoirs, one circular and the other square. The site was abandoned after the invasion of the Qarmatians who attacked the place in 931 CE and its facilities fell into disuse. In the ruins of the important town at Al-Rabadhah have been found expensive ceramics and interior decorations mimicking the imperial Abbasid style.

Al-Kharabah

Al-Kharabah is situated in a depression in the western part of Sahl Rakbah. It has two large reservoirs in almost perfect condition. An aqueduct was built to transfer the water from Wadi al-Aqlq (the area where al- Birkah is constructed) to al-Kharabah. The first pond to the west, acting as a catchment tank, is rectangular in shape with all its four sides stepped. It measures about 36 x 28m for a depth of 5.8 m. It is provided on two corners with a small flight of steps leading to the bottom. The second tank is circular, with a diameter of about 54 metres, stepped from top to bottom, with a depth of 4.8 m. Between the two reservoirs is a single domed room, probably built to accommodate the people who took care of the station, made of roughly cut hewn stones, roughly cut, brought from the nearby harrat. The two reservoirs were fed with water by numerous tunnels draining the surroundings and pouring the water into the rectangular catchment tank, designed to filter the water before it passed into the enormous circular tank through sluices placed at a high level.

Harrat Rahat, stretch of the cleared route between Sufayna and Birket Hadha

Between Birkat Al-Shihiyya, Birkat Al-Hamra and Birkat Hamad, the road passes through a vast plain of rough, rocky ground. Here the Abbasid engineers ordered the largest stones in the path of the road to be cleared to the side, piling them on both sides of the road to form small walls. The road width on this long stretch of the Darb Zubaydah is about 18 meters. Similar stone clearing is also evidenced two kilometres South-West of Fayd. Further South, between Sufayna, and Birkat Hadha, the road crosses ca 16 km of even rockier territory in the volcanic harrat Rahat where some boulders are simply too large to move. Here the road begins to wind, taking the path of least resistance around the largest rocks, while like in the earlier sections, smaller rocks are cleared from the road path and erected into curb-walls. At its widest point, the width of the cleared road is about 20 meters, but in the most difficult terrain the road bifurcates, presenting a view from the air of arteries flowing through the lava plain.

Justification of Outstanding Universal Value

Pilgrimage routes were firstly religious and traditional axes: the completion of the pilgrimage, driven by Islamic religious faith, animated the spirit and purpose of the journey. Yet, they were not only religious axes but also commercial and trade links facilitating movement across the ancient world and the cultural and commercial exchanges with continuity over a long period of time. The serial property The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah perfectly embodies the cultural significance coming from exchanges and multi-dimensional dialogue across countries as it brought together Muslim pilgrims from different ethnic groups and regions, favouring cultural, religious, and scientific exchanges among the people of various parts of the world until the end of the Abbasid Caliphate in the 13 th c. CE.

The edification of a consistent network of roads, including the Kufa-Makkah axis, but also the broader intersecting caravan paths, originating from Egypt, the Levant, Oman and Yemen and all converging to Makkah, represents an outstanding infrastructure and engineering achievement.  

The Kufa-Makkah trail — whose full value can only be understood through its integration and synergies with the other roads — stands out for its overall spatial planning coherency and the importance, quality, and size of its civil engineering work. The planners and builders that developed it along 1,300 km had a full knowledge of the territory through which the route was passing and were able to punctuate the entire length of Darb Zubaydah with pilgrim stations located at a regular distance calculated either in miles or in barid , a unit of measurement translated as “postal station”, as those were extensively developed alongside the pilgrimage trail to create a postal and intelligence network allowing the Caliphs to maintain communication across their wide empire.

While the initial road connecting the Abbasid royal centre to Makkah was designed for horse or camel riding travellers, resulting in a long distance between each station, the popularization of the pilgrimage practice led to the creation of sub-stations to meet poorer pedestrian pilgrims’ needs. The Abbasid elite consolidated and dug wells, built cisterns, edified dams, khan -s and palaces, paved some stretches of the path to make the travel easier for pilgrims, and set up a complete system of milestones and road signage that gave Darb Zubaydah its fame. Opposed to centres popping up haphazardly at any well or oasis along the route, central planning was the main driver of the stations’ network arrangement. The Darb Zubaydah was divided into three main segments: Al-Tha’labiyya was the one-third stop after Kufa and Al-Radhaba was two thirds; in addition, Fayd was identified as the halfway between Kufa and Makkah and had a special relevance.

The ensemble of these elements greatly contributes to its outstanding universal value, forming a remarkable technological ensemble showing the builders’ sound territorial planning skills, attested by the consolidation of a road network intended for the religious but also postal, administrative, and military needs of the Abbasid empire, and illustrating a significant stage of human history, with the consolidation of the regional pilgrimage practice under the Abbasid dynasty.

Many ancient geographers, historians and travellers wrote about Darb Zubaydah. Among them, the most important are: Ibn Khordadbah, ibn Rustah, Abu Al-Faraj, Al-Yaqoubi, Al-Maqdisi, Al-Hamdani, Al- Harbi, Ibn Jubair, and Ibn Battuta. Since the late 19 th century, also western travellers described this trail and had the opportunity to travel along this ancient pilgrimage route.

Criterion (ii): Since the advent of Islam, the Islamic Pilgrimage Routes have played a major and continuous role in the multidirectional exchanges between the populations from each corner of the Islamic world. Though partially developed reactivating pre-existing commercial routes, they created an unprecedented regional network. The vestiges of the Hajj Pilgrimage Routes stand out for their richness and diversity. They include caravanserais, mosques, water systems, forts, palaces, cemeteries, settlements, and roads facilities developed and maintained at different moments in history. The Darb Zubaydah played a key role in religious and cultural exchanges and development during the Islamic Middle Ages, and this is admirably illustrated by the elements of the series representing the routes followed by pilgrims from Kufa. This route exhibits an important interchange of human values, over a span of time extending from the early Islamic to the Late Abbasid and Ottoman periods. Passing through the northern and central regions of Arabia, it connected Iraqi major cities and linked the states and kingdoms through Mesopotamia to the Holy Cities of Makkah and Madinah. The vestiges of the Route witness major developments in architecture, ranging from simple tent camps to fortified Palaces and water management technology (to provide water to large masses of travellers either pilgrim or trade caravans). it includes memorial inscriptions and milestones, and outstanding landscape works aiming to ease travel along the trail.

Criterion (iv): The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes generated an unprecedented network of intertwined coastal and inland routes: they represent an unparalleled spatial planning achievement of impressive geographical scale and illustrate the technical expertise which allowed the establishment and long-standing use of the routes in the challenging climate and topography of the region. The Darb Zubaydah pilgrimage road and infrastructure, differently from other heritage routes, was essentially the result of a top-down decision by the Abbasid rulers to favour the Pilgrimage of Iraqi and Asian Muslims. The spiritual and physical needs of pilgrims traveling from Kufa to Makkah were met by the development of several specialised types of edifices: including water supply infrastructures, mosques, caravanserais , and palaces. The pools, canals, wells, dams and water reservoirs along the route represent an outstanding example of architectural and water management technology which illustrates a significant stage in human ingenuity.

Criterion (vi): The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes illustrate the power and influence of Islamic faith that transcends social class, geographical divisions, and historic periods. The Darb Zubaydah is directly associated with the pilgrimage ritual ( hajj ) engaged by Muslims from all around the world, rich and poor alike. It aimed at facilitating travel through the vast desert wilderness of Arabia. The hajj , the Islamic pilgrimage, forms the fifth pillar of Islam and many memorial inscriptions are found along the trail. Many early Muslim geographers, and later Western travellers too, contribute to Darb Zubaydah’s outstanding universal significance. Travel writing spanning many centuries constitutes an integral part of the legacy of the route documenting not only its physical character, but also the prevailing social environment and the emotions of the travellers adding a temporal depth to the understanding of the route and the pilgrimage.

The attributes of The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah support and carry jointly its Outstanding Universal Value as a whole, in a collective manner. The whole of the route is more than the sum of its constituent parts, but each attribute is an active contributor to its Outstanding Universal Value. The symbolical significance of the property emanates firstly from the remarkable effort perpetuated by Muslim societies through time, to comply with a religious duty. The essence of the Darb Zubaydah carries by itself a spiritual meaning of outstanding universal significance. The mosque remains found in several stations along the trail materialize in the most evident manner the symbolic value of Darb Zubaydah. The cultural value of the property is illustrated by the different facilities found along the road: road facilities, including signage and pavement, are the concrete attributes that made exchanges between the Peninsula and Mesopotamia possible. The outstanding diversity of construction design embodied by the different attributes constitutes another evidence of the cultural, intellectual, and engineering exchanges that occurred in The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah construction process, that saw the contribution of the best engineering expertise from the whole Abbasid empire. The decorative and ceramics vestiges, typical of Abbasid style, found in Al-Radhabah demonstrate that these exchanges were also strongly active in the artistic sphere.

Statements of authenticity and/or integrity

Authenticity

The Islamic pilgrimage to Makkah is a powerfully practiced ritual which gathers millions of Muslim believers every year. Darb Zubaydah remained active for many centuries. The vestiges of the stations, forts, caravanserais, and the desert landscape surrounding them, reflect and exemplify the relevance of the hajj route and the prosperity it brought to the area.

The proposed serial property focuses on a selected corpus of elements which appear as the best-preserved and most significant testimonies of the pilgrimage route facilities. This corpus has the potential to include the ensemble of attributes that “truthfully and credibly express the cultural values of the serial property” . Their well-preserved form and design, and their original materiality express their potential Outstanding Universal Value.

The main attributes are: Vestiges of roadwork (pavement, pathways opened up by clearing stones…); Vestiges of signage infrastructure (milestones, road markers, lighthouse); Vestiges of water management systems installed to meet pilgrims’ water needs throughout the pilgrimage ( birkat , wells, pools, dam); Archaeological vestiges of mosques and palaces.

Pilgrimage routes and practices have evolved with the progressive rise of other Muslim empires and capitals, and have been deeply modified in the past two centuries with the emergence of the European maritime companies, the opening of the Suez Canal, the Ottoman Hejaz railway, and the boom of flight transportation in the mid-20 th century. This historic evolution and the changes it brought strongly affected Darb Zubaydah that saw its khan -s and palaces abandoned, and the overall disuse of its roads; yet some of the ancient wells and cisterns are still seasonally filled of water and its ruined stations are still part of the local desert scape and territoriality. Although the itineraries and modalities have evolved, the continuity of this ritual through time contributes to the authenticity of the proposed transnational property.

The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah used to have tens of stations initiated and consolidated at different periods of time. The proposed transnational serial property sheds light on the remaining elements which all together successfully “ensure the complete representation of the features and processes which convey the property’s significance and express its Outstanding Universal Value ” ( Operational Guidelines § 89). The 13 elements of this transnational serial property depict the diversity of the built infrastructures deployed along the road: road markers, road pavements, wells, cisterns, ruins of palaces, settlements, and forts. The selected elements represent, in their diversity, a true evocation of the context of the pilgrimage to Makkah in ancient times. The sectors of the route materialise the routes followed by pilgrims, while the ruins of the edifices along the route share the direct testimony, conserved and transmitted to the present day, of the practice of the pilgrimage as it occurred under the Abbasid caliphate.

The stations and forts, combined with their routes and commercial markets, provide a very complete picture of the Arab desert culture along a major trade and pilgrimage route whose evocative power is intact. Remains of all the elements that comprised the stations (dwellings, forts, caravanserais, and markets) are still found along the trail. The limited recent development of these sites has given them considerable protection from urban encroachments. The Darb Zubaydah remained active for many centuries. The remains of its stations, forts, caravanserais, and the desert landscape surrounding them, still reflect and exemplify the relevance of this hajj route and the prosperity it brought to the area.

The nomination for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List will act as a catalyser to renew the interest of the international scientific community and foster new on-site research on Darb Zubaydah archaeological elements.

Justification of the selection of the component part(s) in relation to the future nomination as a whole

Darb Zubaydah connected the city of Kufa (and the rest of the Iraqi towns) with the Holy City of Makkah, developing over some 1,300 km. Most of the route develops in the territory of present-day Saudi Arabia where are located 9 of the 13 sites included in the transnational property.

Since the late 1980s, Saudi archaeologists and historians have studied the Saudi section of the route. Its vestiges are mostly fenced and protected, and some have recently been opened to the public.

The selected Saudi sites are evenly distributed from the Iraqi border to the proximity of Makkah and include most of the building typologies and infrastructure elements that define and characterise the Abbasid route. They have been selected for their state of conservation, representativeness, and geographical position along the route and offer a complete overview of the pilgrimage route in its most challenging parts where the deserts, harrat -s, and mountains of the Arabia Peninsula needed to be “tamed” by the carefully planned infrastructural interventions of the Abbasid engineers.

Yet, these sites acquire their true meaning and value only if considered jointly with the four Iraqi elements of the series. The transnational selection of 13 sites permits to underline the international dimension of the ancient pilgrimage route and its substantial uniformity across the entire length of the route.

Comparison with other similar properties

From Islam’s earliest years, the desire to perform the hajj, the Islamic pilgrimage to the Holy City of Makkah, saw large numbers of people travelling to Makkah and to Madinah, the Holy Cities of Islam. As a result, certain pre-Islamic trade roads took on new importance and new routes developed that crisscrossed the Muslim world and the Arabian Peninsula.

To ease the journey of the pilgrims, rulers, and wealthy patrons built caravanserais, supplied water, and provided protection along these roads to Makkah and Madinah. Individual Muslims, in the name of charity, helped others to make the journey easy and safe. So, beyond its spiritual meaning for each pilgrim, the hajj acquired a great importance as a social phenomenon, contributing enormously to forging a melded Islamic culture and a worldwide Islamic community whose shared characteristics bridged differences of nationality, ethnicity, languages, and customs. The stream of pilgrims passed even the most distant parts of the Islamic world, and everywhere everyone knew someone who had been on the hajj. Each passing pilgrim was a tangible reminder of the scope of the faith and the witness of the amalgamation of various cultures. The hajj was the heartbeat of the Earth’s first genuinely transcontinental culture. The Islamic World, for nearly a millennium, was a composite Afro-Eurasian free-trade zone through which not only pilgrims but also traders, merchants and bureaucrats travelled with relative freedom and ease. By creating and nurturing this network, the hajj expanded the possibilities of science, commerce, politics, and religion.

Commerce was supported by a system of caravan and sea routes. The closer one got to Makkah, the more the hajj roads were the main arteries of this system, swelling with pilgrims from all points of the compass. No traveller came to the Holy Cities empty-handed, for some carried goods to pay their way, others bore local news that they carried among the provinces, and more learned ones brought the latest concepts and ideas, essential nutrients for the intellectual life of the Islamic World. The hajj likewise affected many who were not on the road. The desire to assist the pilgrim’s orientation, observation and movements spurred Muslim advances in mathematics, optics, astronomy, navigation, transportation, geography, education, medicine, finance, culture and even politics. The constant flow of pilgrims turned the route into channels of cultural and intellectual ferment.

The concept of “Cultural Route” was integrated in the World Heritage Convention Operational Guidelines in the 1990s. Since, the World Heritage List, and national Tentative Lists, have included several cultural and pilgrimage routes. To highlight the specificities and similarities of The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: Darb Zubaydah with other cultural routes, the comparative analysis addresses four distinct typologies of properties: 1 st ) Other Saudi hajj routes on the Saudi Tentative List, 2 nd ) Pilgrimage routes at the global scale; 3 rd ) Cultural routes in the region; 4 th ) Global transnational cultural routes.

A first, essential reference concerns the other hajj routes that connected Makkah with the rest of the Muslim world. Among the many historic trails, two routes stand out as particularly relevant form the historic and architectural perspective: the Syrian Route and the Egyptian Route. Both are included in the 2015 Saudi Tentative List.

The Syrian Pilgrimage Route (Saudi Arabia TL 2015, criteria ii, iv, vi): It is the oldest route used by Muslim pilgrim caravans. It connected Damascus to Madinah, with a total length of 1,307 kilometres, passing through several camps and stations. The most important among them were: That Al-Hajj, Tabuk, Al-Akhdhar, Al-Mu’azam, Al-Aqraa, Al-Hijr, and Al-Ula. In various Islamic periods and eras, the trail received the interest of Caliphs and Muslim rulers who conducted many of the constructions along the route, including the creation of pools, canals, forts, castles, mosques, bridges, and markets. All along the trail are found numerous inscriptions and memorial Islamic inscriptions left by the pilgrims.

The Egyptian Pilgrimage Route (Saudi Arabia TL 2015, criteria ii, iv, vi): It linked Egypt to Makkah and Medina and benefited Muslim pilgrims coming from Egypt, Sudan, Central Africa, Morocco, Andalusia, and Sicily. The pilgrims gathered in Egypt and then travelled in large caravans through Sinai to Aqaba. From there, according to the political circumstances, they followed either an internal land route or a coastal one to reach Makkah. The Egyptian pilgrimage route received great attention from Muslim rulers in different Islamic periods. A series of pilgrimage stations marked the way and offered the pilgrims the necessary facilities: pools, canals, and wells, but also bridges, castles, forts, and mosques. In the second half of the 19 th century, the Egyptian Route was progressively replaced by faster and safer sea route bringing pilgrims directly to Jeddah.

These two properties share many of the values and attributes of The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah and are intimately connected to this property from the geographic, cultural, and religious points of view. Jointly, these pilgrimage routes offer a comprehensive representation of the hajj phenomenon across different historic periods and geographic contexts. A global reflection on the hajj routes — to address the different options and envisage the best way for the protection and valorisation of these properties in the World Heritage context — will be developed in the coming years by the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in coordination with the neighbouring countries, UNESCO World Heritage Centre, and the Advisory Bodies.

A second relevant group to compare with is represented by other pilgrimage routes at the world scale:

Route of Santiago de Compostela Camino Francés and Routes of Northern Spain (Spain 1993, and France, 1998 – criteria ii, iv, vi): Santiago de Compostela was proclaimed the first European Cultural itinerary by the Council of Europe in 1987. This route from the French-Spanish border was — and still is — taken by pilgrims to reach Santiago de Compostela in Spain. Some 1,800 buildings along the route, both religious and secular, are of great historic interest. The route played a fundamental role in encouraging cultural exchanges between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe during the Middle Ages. It remains a testimony to the power of the Christian faith among people of all social classes and from all over Europe. Santiago de Compostela was the supreme goal for countless thousands of pious pilgrims who converged there from all over Europe throughout the Middle Ages. To reach Spain, pilgrims had to pass through France, and the group of important historical monuments included in this inscription marks out the four routes by which they did so.

Sacred Sites and Pilgrimage Routes in the Kii Mountain Range (Japan, 2004, criteria ii, iii, iv, vi): Set in the dense forests of the Kii Mountains overlooking the Pacific Ocean, three sacred sites – Yoshino and Omine, Kumano Sanzan, Koyasan – linked by pilgrimage routes to the ancient capital cities of Nara and Kyoto, reflect the fusion of Shinto, rooted in the ancient tradition of nature worship in Japan, and Buddhism, which was introduced from China and the Korean Peninsula. The sites, covering 495.3 ha, and their surrounding forest landscape reflect a persistent and extraordinarily well-documented tradition of sacred mountains over 1,200 years. The area, with its abundance of streams, rivers, and waterfalls, is still part of the living culture of Japan and is much visited for ritual purposes and hiking, with up to 15 million visitors annually. Each of the three sites contains shrines, some of which were founded as early as the 9 th century CE.

Route of the Franciscan Evangelisation (Guatemala, TL 2002, criteria i, iv, v, vi): The Route counts 26 churches, some chaplainries and oratories built during the time of Spanish dominance (1524-1821) under the direction of the order of Preachers of San Francisco, for the religious teaching and the castellanización of the local natives descending of the Mayan. This circumstance explains the stylistic unit of the buildings, as well as the presence of great quantity of works of art, used with didactic and religious purposes that still play a role in the region as fundamental elements of the local ideological unit.

La Via Francigena in Italy (Italy, TL 2019, criteria ii, iv, vi): The Via Francigena in Italy is the first and most important road that, in the Middle Ages, connected the countries beyond the western Alps (the land of the Franks) to Rome. Dating back to the Longobard era, this road was not built from a single path but from a network of roads that converged at junctions or mandatory points of passage. It has consistently been the preferred route for pilgrimages to Rome from the Middle Ages to the present day. The proposed route includes the entire network of routes from the Alpine passes to Rome, with a total linear extension of about 1,200 km. The route network is associated with the most significant structures connected to it: cities and rural settlements, old and new; monastic complexes; places of worship; buildings for reception, hospitality, and assistance; equipment for rest-stops; defensive structures (castles, forts, fortresses, towers, and strongholds), artefacts and road infrastructure (bridges, fords, ports). The Via Francigena in Italy represents one of the most eminent "documents-monuments" of the creation and development of pilgrim routes, standing out distinctly as a cultural route and an inseparable combination of material and immaterial assets: urban, landscape, architectural, technological, and artistic.

Though sharing many similarities with these properties, The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah is the only one relating to the Islamic religion and it materialises in a unique way, the centralised planning efforts accomplished by the Muslim leaders of the Abbasid caliphate to favour the implementation of the fifth pillar of Islam. This unique pilgrimage, trade, and administrative route played a role comparable to the Roman Empire ancient road network in facilitating transportation and exchange throughout the Abbasid Empire and acquires therefore a unique relevance among the pilgrimage routes included in the World Heritage List and national Tentative Lists.

A third relevant comparison can be drawn with a site that was part of the pre-Islamic Road network upon which the Islamic hajj routes developed:

Incense Route - Desert Cities in the Negev (Israel, 2005, criteria iii, v): The four Nabatean towns of Haluza, Mamshit, Avdat and Shivta, along with associated fortresses and agricultural landscapes in the Negev Desert, are spread along routes linking them to the Mediterranean end of the incense and spice route. Together they reflect the hugely profitable trade in frankincense and myrrh from south Arabia to the Mediterranean, which flourished from the 3 rd century BCE until the 2 nd century CE. With the vestiges of their sophisticated irrigation systems, urban constructions, forts, and caravanserai they bear witness to the way in which the harsh desert was settled for trade and agriculture.

The Darb Zubaydah was partially established along the path of earlier caravan routes that crossed the Arabian Peninsula. Yet, its planned development in the Abbasid Empire period — when new regions were converted to Islam and more pilgrims were able to carry out the hajj — sets it entirely apart from the ancient spice and incense route that favoured the development of the Negev Nabatean towns.

Finally, it is important to compare The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah with two major transnational cultural routes and an ambitious transnational project that set important benchmarks for the ensemble of the hajj routes as they result from a long-term transnational process supported by the UNESCO World Heritage Centre and the Advisory Bodies.

Qhapaq Ñan, Andean Road System (Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, 2014, criteria ii, iii, iv, vi): This site is an extensive Inca communication, trade and defence network of roads covering 30,000 km. Constructed by the Incas over several centuries and partly based on pre-Inca infrastructure, this extraordinary network through one of the world’s most extreme geographical terrains linked the snow-capped peaks of the Andes — at an altitude of more than 6,000 m — to the coast, running through hot rainforests, fertile valleys, and absolute deserts. It reached its maximum expansion in the 15 th century when it spread across the length and breadth of the Andes. The Qhapac Ñan, Andean Road System includes 273 components spread over more than 6,000 km that were selected to highlight the social, political, architectural, and engineering achievements of the network, along with its associated infrastructure for trade, accommodation, and storage, as well as sites of religious significance.

Silk Roads: The Routes Network of Chang’an-Tianshan Corridor (China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, 2014, criteria ii, iii, v, vi): Silk Road on the territory of Kazakhstan is divided into several main parts. Represented and marked by monuments of history and culture these sections (roads) are original and have distinct features distinguishing them one from each other. Most probably, it was the natural environment and adaptation of human to existence in definite climatic conditions that has shaped the originality of a definite section. It can be affirmed with full confidence that the Silk Road is a phenomenon of unification of diversity of regions with the help of universal system of exchange of human values which was created, developed, and maintained by people of different ethnical, linguistic, religious beliefs during more than two thousand years of existence of the Silk Road.

Frontiers of the Roman Empire (United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, Slovakia, The Netherlands, 1987, 2005, 2008, 2021, criteria ii, iii, iv): The ‘Roman Limes’ represents the border line of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent in the 2 nd century CE. It stretched over 5,000 km from the Atlantic coast of northern Britain, through Europe to the Black Sea, and from there to the Red Sea and across North Africa to the Atlantic coast. Certain elements of the line have been excavated, some reconstructed and a few destroyed. Multiple sections of this long ancient frontier, across different European countries, have been progressively inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1987, while other sections in Europe and beyond, are currently being considered for future nominations. The 118-km-long Hadrian’s Wall (UK), built in 122 CE, the Antonin Wall, a 60-km long fortification in Scotland started by Emperor Antonius Pius in 142 CE, and two sections of the frontier in Germany form a first transnational property (Frontiers of the Roman Empire). The frontier along the Danube River, distributed across contemporary Germany, Austria and Slovakia, is represented by another transnational WH property (Frontiers of the Roman Empire – The Danube Limes Western Segment) that reflects the specificities of this part of the Roman Frontier through a selection of sites representing key features of the ancient border and the way these structures related to local topography. Finally, another transnational property, Frontiers of the Roman Empire – The Lower German Limes, in Germany and The Netherlands, comprises military and civilian sites and infrastructure that marked the edge of Lower Germany from the 1 st to 5 th centuries CE.

Though referring to different regions of the world and lacking the profound spiritual significance of the hajj pilgrimage, these major transnational properties are an essential reference for the creation of a comprehensive system of World Heritage hajj routes capable to include a series of trails across multiple Arab countries within a coordinated major regional project focusing on the Islamic Pilgrimage.

An effective coordination among the different concerned countries, and the positive cooperation with UNESCO and ICOMOS, are a necessary pre-requisite for such large-scale transnational nominations. The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah is an important first step (it is the first transnational Tentative List site in the Arab Region) of what could become another successful international cooperation project. The countries of the Arab Region share a common language and a common religious and cultural background, all favourable starting points upon which building a long-term international project with the support of the international community.

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PRESSR: Saudi Tourism Authority secures landmark new partnerships in record-breaking trade show

  • More than 14 agreements were secured during the three-day show, including major global partnerships with Trip.com Group.
  • The agreements mark a hugely successful ITB Berlin for Saudi’s tourism ecosystem with more than 55 partners exhibiting on the eye-catching Saudi stand and the celebration of welcoming 100 million tourists to Saudi in 2023.

RIYADH: – Saudi tourism celebrated one of the most successful travel trade shows in its history at ITB Berlin this week celebrating Saudi’s milestone achievement of welcoming over 100 million tourists in 2023 and securing major new trade partnerships as the sector continues its remarkable growth.

Building on the success of the ITB Berlin 2023 edition, the Saudi Tourism Authority (STA) secured more than 14 agreements, including major partnerships with Trip.com Group, Flynas and Eurowings as well as new collaboration with Visit Bahrain, Visit Oman and Qatar Tourism. These actions are set to boost Saudi’s tourism sector, propelling it towards unprecedented sustainable growth and further solidifying the kingdom's position as a leading global tourism destination.

Minister of Tourism and Chairman of Saudi Tourism Authority, His Excellency Ahmed Aqeel Al-Khatib, praised Saudi Arabia's successful participation in this year's ITB.

He said: “The 2024 Saudi pavilion showcased the bright future of tourism in our country in line with Saudi Vision 2030, along with the growth and evolution of Saudi’s tourism sector.

“Our participation in ITB has had a positive impact on enhancing Saudi’s position on the global tourism map -  strengthening relationships and cooperation with key international partners and catalyzing joint work to achieve global sustainability in tourism.”

Fahd Hamidaddin CEO and Board Member of the Saudi Tourism Authority (STA):

“Saudi’s participation in ITB Berlin has been one of the most successful in our history and will help turbocharge the remarkable growth our thriving tourism sector has already seen.

“With more than 55 partners from the tourism ecosystem attending the show, we secured more than 14 new agreements that will increase our connectivity and ensure the world is aware of our dynamic and diverse destinations.

“Saudi’s growth so far is just the start of our story, a story which will be built on for years to come.”

During ITB, STA and Trip.com Group unveiled a major partnership aimed at attracting 350,000 additional tourists to Saudi over the next year. This collaboration, STA's largest global partnership to date, leverages Trip.com Group’s extensive network and technological expertise to promote Saudi’s unique tourism offerings to a worldwide audience.

In a strategic move, STA joined forces with Flynas to launch a campaign aimed at boosting international visits to Saudi. The partnership will see a new Flynas route between Jeddah and Berlin launching from from 1 September 2024, with three flights per week - aiming to significantly increase passenger capacity and enhance access to Saudi's rich cultural and historical treasures.

In another agreement aiming to enhance air travel connections between Germany and Saudi, the Saudi Air Connectivity Program and Eurowings signed an agreement to launch two direct routes connecting Cologne and Berlin to Jeddah, with the goal of beginning operations in October 2024.

Expanding its collaborative efforts across the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), STA announced further collaboration with Visit Bahrain, Visit Oman, and Qatar Tourism which will see new promotional campaigns designed to attract new international tourists to the region. These innovative campaigns, designed to showcase the diverse cultural, historical, and natural landscapes of the GCC countries, offer international visitors a seamless experience exploring the rich heritage and modern marvels of Saudi and its neighboring states.

The Saudi delegation of more than 55 representatives was led by His Excellency Ahmed Al Khateeb, Minister of Tourism and Chairman of STA accompanied by Her Highness Princess Haifa bint Muhammad, the Vice Minister of Tourism, STA leadership, wider Saudi tourism ecosystem leaders and key partners including destination management companies, hotels, and airlines.

Over the course of the event, more than 14,000 people interacted with the Saudi stand which saw a record number of Saudi partners showcasing hundreds of bookable products for partners in destinations such as Jeddah, AlUla, and the Red Sea.

To mark the milestone of welcoming more than 100 million tourists in 2023, His Excellency Ahmed Al-Khateeb hosted a celebratory reception convening global tourism leaders on the sidelines of ITB to showcase the remarkable growth and development of Saudi’s tourism sector. The event brought together leaders from the global travel industry and distinguished guests and further highlighted the exceptional collaborative opportunities that await exploration in the heart of Arabia.

Saudi Tourism Authority is grateful to all its partners who helped to deliver a successful showcase at ITB Berlin 2024 and looks forward with optimism to meeting its targets, as well as participating at the Arabian Travel Market in Dubai from 6-9 May 2024.

About Saudi Tourism Authority

Saudi Tourism Authority (STA), launched in June 2020, is responsible for marketing Saudi’s tourism destinations worldwide and developing the destination’s offerings through programs, packages, and business support. Its mandate includes developing the country’s unique assets and destinations, hosting and participating in industry events, and promoting Saudi’s destination brand locally and overseas. STA operates 16 representative offices around the world, serving 38 countries.

To learn more, please visit www.VisitSaudi.com

About Trip.com Group

Trip.com Group is a leading global travel service provider comprising of Trip.com, Ctrip, Skyscanner, Travix, MakeMyTrip and Qunar. It helps travelers around the world make informed and cost-effective bookings for travel products and services, as an advanced transaction platform consisting of apps, websites and 24/7 customer service centers. It enables partners to connect their offerings with users through the aggregation of comprehensive travel-related content and product resources, making it the best partner for destination marketing solutions and product promotion.

About Visit Bahrain

Visit Bahrain aims to develop Bahrain’s tourism industry by working with government and private sector stakeholders and encourage greater footfall through the country. Visit Bahrain’s website offers a variety of ways to explore Bahrain, including via guides to events happening in the country, tours of various attractions.

About Visit Oman

Visit Oman, launched in 2021 as a subsidiary of OMRAN Group, is the Sultanate of Oman’s digitally native online booking platform, accredited by the International Air Transport Association (IATA), serving the needs of both the local and international travel industry. Through strategic partnerships, Visit Oman seamlessly connects the entire accredited Omani travel supply chain – flights, accommodation, transfers, tour operators, experiences, and more – all of which have passed a rigorous quality assurance framework to ensure exceptional standards.

About Visit Qatar  

Visit Qatar’s mission is to establish Qatar as a place where cultural authenticity meets modernity, and where people of the world come together to experience unique offerings in culture, sports, business and family entertainment, rooted in Service Excellence. Visit Qatar will regulate and develop the tourism industry, encouraging investment from the private sector. It will set the national strategy for the tourism sector, reviewing it periodically and overseeing its implementation, with the aim of diversifying tourism offerings in the country and increasing visitor spend. Through our network of international offices in priority markets, and cutting-edge digital platforms, Visit Qatar is expanding Qatar’s presence globally and enhancing the tourism sector.

About Flynas

Flynas connects more than 70 domestic and international destinations with more than 1500 weekly flights and has flown more than 78 million passengers since its launch in 2007, with the aim to reach 165 domestic and international destinations, in line with the objectives of the Saudi Vision 2030.

© Press Release 2024

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The Hajj From West Africa From a Global Historical Perspective (19th and 20th Centuries)

Over the last years, in average, 2,1 million people per year performed the hajj. These millions stand in contrast to the numbers visiting Mecca half a century ago. On average, until 1946 a rough 60,000 pilgrims visited Mecca annually, with at least half of these coming from the Arabian Peninsula. Today Saudi nationals make up about a quarter of all pilgrims. The explanations for the staggering thirtyfold increase in total pilgrims, and the even more spectacular growth of the number of foreign pilgrims in slightly more than half a century are quite simple. First of all, the increasing world population in general led to larger numbers of pilgrims. Second, the journey became safer and better organised during the 20th century. In those parts of the Muslim world where it was not already (the Ottoman Empire), the organisation of the hajj became a state affair, organised first by the colonial authorities, and by the postcolonial states afterwards. Third, despite growing disparities in the distribution of global economic wealth an increasing number of Muslims could afford to pay for the journey. And finally the availability of cheap mechanical mass transport increased over this time period. This paper will look at these interconnected reasons for the spectacular growth of the hajj in the past half century from a world historical perspective, focussing on the West African Sahel in the 19th and 20th centuries. In this paper I hope to sketch how state rule, changing economies, motorised mass transport, and religion are interconnected phenomena, which are all shaped by and giving shape to world historical events in the Muslim world. The focus will be largely on the changing demography and social geography of the pilgrimage journey to Mecca as performed by pilgrims from the Sahel, and the changing significance of this journey in their lives.

Au cours des dernières années, environ 2,1 millions de personnes se rendent à La Mecque en pèlerinage chaque année. Ce nombre contraste avec le nombre de pèlerins d’un demi-siècle en arrière. Jusqu’en 1946 il y avait à peu près 60 000 pèlerins qui visitaient La Mecque chaque année, la moitié d’entre eux provenait de la péninsule arabique elle-même. Aujourd’hui les Saoudiens ne représentent qu’un quart du total de tous les pèlerins. Les explications pour la multiplication stupéfiante du nombre total de visiteurs, et du nombre encore plus spectaculaire de pèlerins étrangers sont très simples. D’abord, l’accroissement général de la population mondiale se traduit par un plus grand nombre de pèlerins. Deuxièmement, au cours du XX e siècle, le voyage est devenu plus organisé et moins dangereux. Au-delà des pays musulmans où c’était déjà le cas, notamment dans l’Empire ottoman, l’organisation du hadj s’est transformée en une affaire d’état ; coordonnée d’abord par les autorités coloniales et ensuite par les états post-coloniaux. Troisièmement, malgré les disparités dans la répartition de richesses économiques au niveau global, un plus grand nombre de musulmans sont en mesure de payer le voyage. Finalement, pendant cette période, le transport en masse mécanique est devenu de moins en moins cher, donc plus disponible. En se concentrant sur le Sahel de l’Afrique de l’Ouest des XIX e et XX e siècles, cet article vise à analyser, d’une perspective d’histoire globale, ces nombreuses questions liées les unes aux vis-à-vis de l’accroissement spectaculaire du hadj au cours du dernier demi-siècle. L’auteur cherche ainsi à ébaucher les interconnexions entre les régimes, les économies changeantes, le transport en masse motorisé et la religion. Tous ces phénomènes sont façonnés par, et façonnent à leur tour, les évènements de l’histoire du le monde musulman. L’accent sera mis sur la croissance démographique et la géographie sociale du pèlerinage vers La Mecque, tel qu’il est effectué par les pèlerins du Sahel, de même que sur la signification changeante de ce voyage dans leurs vies.

  • Introduction

The hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, is among the largest annual gatherings in the Muslim world. Its importance in the lives of individual Muslims, as well as for the Muslim world, cannot be overestimated. The hajj is first and foremost the performance of the prescribed religious rituals in Mecca, but it can be seen as the pilgrimage itself, the journey to and from the holy places. 1 The latter meaning is central to this paper.

Over the last years, on average, 2.1 million people per year have performed the hajj. 2 These millions stand in contrast to the numbers visiting Mecca only half a century ago. For the first half of the 20th century until 1946, on average roughly 60,000 pilgrims visited Mecca annually, with at least half of these pilgrims coming from the Arabian Peninsula. 3 Today Saudi nationals make up about a quarter of all pilgrims. The explanations for the staggering thirtyfold increase in total pilgrims, and the even more spectacular growth of the number of foreign pilgrims in slightly more than half a century are quite simple. First of all, the increasing world population in general led to larger numbers of pilgrims. Second, the journey became safer and better organized during the 20th century. 4 In those parts of the Muslim world where it was not already (the Ottoman Empire), the organization of the hajj became a state affair, organized first by the colonial authorities, and by the postcolonial states subsequently. 5 Third, despite growing disparities in the distribution of global economic wealth, an increasing number of Muslims could afford to pay for the journey. And finally the availability of cheap mechanical mass transport increased over this time period.

This paper will look at these interconnected reasons for the spectacular growth of the hajj in the past half century from a world historical perspective, focusing on the West African Sahel in the 19th and 20th centuries. In this paper I hope to sketch how state rule, changing economies, motorized mass transport, and religion are interconnected phenomena, which are all shaped by and giving shape to world historical events in the Muslim world. A broad sketch of economic developments in Africa during this period will provide the background to these arguments, but the focus will be largely on the changing demography and social geography of the pilgrimage journey to Mecca as performed by pilgrims from the Sahel, and the changing significance of this journey in their lives.

The West African Sahel is a region with a long history of Islamic presence and a long-standing pilgrimage tradition. Up until today the region furnishes the largest number of African pilgrims to Mecca despite its geographical distance. 6 Both the increase in the number of West African pilgrims in recent centuries and its causes broadly follow patterns parallel to those in other parts of the world, but I would like to sketch three important West African specifics.

The first is related to the broad macro economic and demographic history of the region. 7 In the late 19th century the Sahel was in political and economic turmoil despite favorable climatic circumstances. The abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade altered the political, social, and economic landscape of the Western Sahel, giving rise to the Jihad states of the 19th century and changing the production and consumption of slaves. At the same time, the rising demand for slaves in Egypt and the Indian Ocean region, and the subsequent Egyptian colonization of Sudan gave rise to new patterns of slave trade and consumption in the Eastern part of the Sahel and Central Africa, and ultimately led to the foundation of the Mahdist state. 8 Colonial conquest brought new upheaval, coinciding with a period of bad climatic conditions, drought, and famine. Recovery started everywhere with the creation of new transport infrastructures, especially railway lines, and the successful introduction of cash crops, especially peanuts and cotton. This process started first in Senegal, where the introduction of peanuts dates from the mid-19th century. 9 It more or less ended in Niger in the mid-1930s, where peanut growing was deeply connected to the peanut industry in Northern Nigeria. The new colonial ‘open economy’ had its victims and its setbacks. 10 But the colonial economic reorganization also gave access to monetary wealth to a larger group of agricultural producers and it led to the restructuration of the West African merchant class to whom Islam was a pivotal part of their identity. Combined with new state structures it further led to the creation of a new class of professionals of all kinds: from railroad and dockworkers, via professional soldiers, to mid-level bureaucrats. More importantly, the new cash crops and colonial labor policies, including the abolition of slavery in the 20th century, led to the creation of a class of mobile agricultural laborers ( infra ). The monetary economy of which they were part allowed these new groups of potential Muslim pilgrims to travel by new means of transport, in new political settings.

A second observation is that the growth in the number of West African pilgrims is less due to demographics than to conversion. West Africa witnessed a mass conversion to Islam from the early 20th century onwards. After the Jihad states of the 19th century had further increased the potential realm of Islam in West Africa, the number of Muslims increased spectacularly under colonial rule under paradoxical circumstances. Islam had been present in the Sahel as a social cultural and political force since the 8th century AD, but in large parts of the region Muslims had always remained an influential yet small minority. However, the French colonial administration perceived the region as ‘Muslim’ and therefore restricted Christian missionary work. At the same time it saw Islam as a higher form of civilization than still existing local cults. It therefore looked benevolent upon further Muslim conversions, which took place en masse, largely as a reaction to colonial rule. 11 There is a second paradox. Colonial conquests had made the Sahel an unsafe place, but colonial rule made it safer and politically submitted but stable. It ended cycles of warfare and mass enslavement that had made traveling over land a hazardous endeavor. After the colonial pacification of the Sahel, notable changes took place in the roads taken by the pilgrims, in line with increased safety, and the availability and technical possibilities of new means of transport, notably steamers and trains. As more faster and cheaper transport became available in the 1940s in the form of motorcars and airplanes, and as general African incomes, especially of the smallholder farmer and merchant grew in the 1950s, more and more of the growing number of African believers performed the hajj. This increase in pilgrims continued in absolute numbers in the 1970s, despite the decrease of wealth in Africa.

A third specificity for the pilgrimage as performed by West Africans stems from a combination of geography and Islamic law. African pilgrims could travel to Mecca entirely over land, even on foot if needed, and they were allowed to do so by the Maliki School of Islamic law most West Africans adhere to. According to the other three schools of Islamic law, the prospective pilgrim needs to have the means to procure transport and provisions superfluous to the actual costs of the journey, and to provide the provisions for dependent relatives at home while being away. Furthermore, anyone living more than three days’ walking away from Mecca is obliged to have the means to procure transport. The Maliki school, however, holds that pilgrims can walk all the way to Mecca, regardless of distance; that they can work along the way to complement their provisions and means of transport; and that they do not need to have enough means for the return trip and the upkeep of relatives either. 12 This means that West African pilgrims could leave on hajj without all the money needed to sustain them through their travels and walk the whole distance if they had to, while complementing the costs of the journey by working along the way. Due to these geographical and religious legal conditions, many West African pilgrims combined the hajj with labor migration, profiting from the fluctuations in the labor market, and taking years, even decades, yes sometimes even their whole life to arrive in Mecca and return home. 13 In comparison, pilgrims from the Indonesian Archipelago perforce had to travel the largest leg of their journey by boat (or, later, airplane) and the most important legal school in Indonesia, the Shafi’i School, is adamant when it comes to having all the means to pay the fares of one’s return journey prior to leaving, and on leaving one’s family with enough means to live in one’s absence. 14

  • The 19th Century

In the 19th century West African hajjis were mainly scholars, merchants, and rulers, who combined the hajj with religious study (either of Muslim sciences or of Sufi mysticism), trade, or political contacts. Their pilgrimage depended on the pilgrim’s location, on his religious affiliation, his knowledge of the prevailing political situation in the regions he would travel through, the safety on the roads, his personal means, and his contacts in the larger world through trade, scholarship, or politics. In the 19th century a number of larger events influenced these choices.

In the 19th century West African pilgrims could join the large trans-Saharan caravans, which offered organization, safety, and the possibility of logistical support if needed. Starting in the early 18th century, pilgrims from present-day Mauritania and the Western Sahara even started to organize a special annual pilgrimage caravan, in which whole families could travel to Mecca. 15 Taking the trans-Sahara road allowed richer pilgrims to take the boat from the North African coast, which was faster and more comfortable than traveling over land. Already in the 18th century, maritime powers, notably France and Britain, but also lesser powers such as the city-state of Dubrovnik, were engaged in the transport of pilgrims. These were happy to travel aboard the vessels of the unbelievers as they were less prone to pirate attacks. 16 Traveling across the Sahara allowed West African pilgrims to connect with centers of religious learning in North Africa, such as the Qarawiyyîn, Zeytûna, and al-Azhar universities. With the slow rise of the Tijaniyya Sufi brotherhood in West Africa, pilgrims of that affiliation combined the hajj with visits to the tomb of Cheick Ahmad Tijani, the founder of their order, in Fes. Finally, if well timed, traveling trans-Sahara to Cairo allowed pilgrims to travel with the renowned Mahmal caravan, carrying the black shroud covering the Ka’aba , which is renewed every year and which was made in Egypt until 1952. 17

But crossing the Sahara remained a dangerous endeavor. Caravans could get lost and die of thirst if water wells were not reached in time or had dried up. They could be pillaged and routed, or be buried in a sandstorm. Political factors were important as well. The rising unrest in the Mediterranean during the Napoleonic wars made sea voyages on European ships far less safe. The wars between the Egyptian Khedive Mohammed ‘Ali and the Wahhabi Saudi’s on the Arabian Peninsula in the early 19th century disrupted the Mahmal caravans from Egypt and heightened insecurity. 18 Feelings of safety declined further with the subsequent European conquest of North Africa, announced with the occupation of Egypt in the Napoleonic wars, followed by the conquest of Algiers by France in 1830 and of Tunis in 1871, and by the British occupation of Egypt in 1882. The decline of the trans-Saharan trade in that same period and partly for the same reasons made traveling along these roads even less attractive as pilgrimage and trade became slowly disconnected. 19 The French colonial conquest of the Sahara in the late 19th century made traveling along Saharan roads even more dangerous.

Hence the trans-Sahara road slowly gave way to the trans-Sahel road, which offered different challenges and opportunities. The full establishment of the Jihad States in the 19th century and the return of peace in the central Sahel led to more safety after centuries of insecurity ( supra ). Continued religious warfare and colonial conquests of the western Sahel did not so much impede as encourage people to leave the area, on hajj or as refugees. However, the Egyptian conquest of what is now the Republic of South Sudan in the 1820s, and the ensuing rise in slave trade in that area, as well as in Darfur, made traveling in the eastern Sahel more perilous again. 20 In the late 19th century, the Mahdist state made this part of the Sahel slightly safer for a brief period, although the Mahdist regime had a tendency to recruit pilgrims into their armies based on the argument that jihad had replaced hajj as a central pillar of Islam. As a last factor of importance we need to mention the colonial conquest of the Sahel starting in the late 19th century, which disrupted trade, traffic and pilgrimage throughout the region. However, it caused many pious Muslims to flee their region of origin towards lands not yet conquered by the infidels. As these lands grew smaller and smaller, a number of these Muslims ended in the Hejjaz as muhajirs : religious refugees.

All these circumstances and their effects on pilgrims’ choices are clearly visible in the pilgrimages of two 19th-century West Africans whose accounts we have. The first and oldest account so far found of a pilgrimage along the Sahel roads is that of Al-Hajj Boubeker, a pilgrim who left his native Futa Toro on the Middle Senegal River in 1816. Instead of taking the trans-Saharan road directly to Morocco, Boubeker traveled to Djenné, probably for religious reasons, from where, probably through misguidance, he first traveled to Ségu. From there he traveled overland to Timbuktu, from where he wished to continue his journey through the Fezzan to Cairo via a non-specified road. In Timbuktu he learned about the inhospitality of the Saharan populations and the dangers and costs of the journey. As Al-Hajj Boubeker had no financial means and intended to accomplish his journey while living on charity, he decided to change course and follow the Sahel road. He first traveled back to Djenné, where he boarded a ship. He followed the Niger River, then the Sokoto River towards Katsina, and from Kano he followed the Hadeija and Komadugu Rivers to Lake Chad. From then on, he traveled through Bagirmi, Wadaï, Darfur, and Kordofan to Suakin. 21 His decision to take the Sahel road instead of the trans-Sahara road reflects first of all Al-Hajj Boubeker’s economic conditions as a poor Sufi beggar. But it also reflects some of the developments sketched above: the creation and consolidation of the Sokoto caliphate in the early 19th century, and the increase in commerce with European traders on the West African coast that had led to a gradual shift away from the trans-Saharan trade roads, where caravans declined in size, and towards east-west bound traffic along the Sahel.

A second pilgrimage that reflects the developments in the 19th century is that of Ahmad bin Thuwair al-Janna, who began his pilgrimage in 1829. 22 He first went from his native city of Wadân in present-day Mauritania to Walâta via Tichît, a city functioning as a gathering point for pilgrims. He then traveled to Morocco via the trade road to the Draâ valley passing Ligsayba. Ahmad’s journey first makes a deep southward curve, which is explained by his need to collect some outstanding debts with his trade relations. To settle one’s credits and debts before going on hajj is prescribed by Muslim law, but Ahmad could certainly use the money in any case. The official pilgrim caravan described above had already left so Ahmad joined an ordinary trade caravan. He traversed Morocco, where he visited the tombs of numerous Sufi saints, and then boarded a British ship in Larache bound to Alexandria via Livorno in Italy, where he spent 40 days in quarantine. Upon arrival in Alexandria, he was quarantined for another eight days. The increasing connections between Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia, notably through colonial conquests, but also through increased trade and the transport of South Asian pilgrims, had led to the rise of diseases such as cholera, which led both European and Ottoman powers to apply quarantine to travelers from the Muslim world. Ahmad noted these measures against his continued travel with some bitterness, and ascribed them to the growing weakness of the Muslim world in the face of Europe. 23 In Suez he boarded a ship calling at Yanbu, from where he continued by camel to Medina and on to Mecca. He arrived in 1831, taking one and a half years to arrive. On the way back he traveled over land until Benghazi, and from there continued mostly by boat. He stopped for considerable periods in Cairo, Tunis, and Fez to visit the al-Azhar, Zeytûna, and Qarawiyyîn universities, or to buy books. He also made a stop in Algiers and Gibraltar in 1834, where he was literally hosted as royalty by the French and British authorities, who noted his arrival in their newspapers, hailed him with salutary gunshots, gave him presents, and inquired with interest about his country of origin. Especially the gun salute by the governor of Gibraltar made a favorable impression as this salute came from ‘an enemy of Islam.’ Ahmad attributes the generosity he received from the Christians to divine benevolence. 24 A more worldly explanation would be the growing interest among European powers in the possibilities of further African conquests, which became a reality later that century.

The 20th Century

From the twentieth century onwards, completely different factors came to play an important role in the performance of the hajj. Colonial conquests had made the Sahel an unsafe place, but colonial rule made it safer and politically submitted but stable. Safety or political and military turmoil were therefore no longer important considerations in the travels pilgrims undertook. By the time postcolonial conflicts broke out in the 1950s and 1960s in Chad and Sudan, air transport had become so common that these conflicts only played a role for the most pious: those who continued to travel on foot through the Sahel, instead of taking the heavenly road to Mecca. 25 However, colonial rule had a tremendous impact on the pilgrimage in different ways, bringing new options and new choices for pilgrims, but also new obstacles.

Colonization brought along new concepts and practices of state, especially new concepts of administration and the legibility and surveillance of state subjects, the attempts at control of religious power, and the redistribution of wealth and power. To accommodate the hajj within these fields, colonial states, and postcolonial states afterwards, developed specific policies towards the hajj.

From the 1840s onwards, the hajj became an instrument of religious and social politics for the French empire towards its Muslim subjects in the Maghreb. Following the Dutch example in the Dutch East Indies, the French colonial authorities started to first regulate and then organize the pilgrimage. The reasoning behind these policies changed over time. First, interference was derived from land policies in Algeria. In 1840, the French state expropriated the awqâf : local religious foundations with a religious, social, and economic function. Following administrative logic, the colonial government therefore saw it as its duty to take up the functions previously held by the awqâf , one of which was the organization and financing of the hajj for a number of its constituents. 26 From this followed that the French state paid the journey home for destitute Algerian pilgrims, and financed the construction of a hotel for French subjects in Mecca. 27 The main reason for interference, however, was the desire to monitor the pilgrims. In the 19th and early 20th centuries most orientalists were convinced that the hajj had a negative effect on the perceptions of colonial rule held by colonial subjects, and that these perceptions could be carried back home where they could upset the colonial order. 28 This fear and its ensuing attempts at controlling the pilgrimage subsided somewhat by the end of the 1940s, although ‘political Islam’ remained a passionate concern for the officers of the Muslim Affairs Office ( Bureau des Affaires Musulmans ) until the end of colonial rule. 29 A second concern, one for which the colonial authorities knew they were unable to find a definite solution, was the departure of pilgrims outside any form of state control. Lack of population registers and other means of state surveillance over subjects and the very possibility to travel over land to Mecca meant that unknown numbers of pilgrims left for the hajj without any form of permission or papers. Measures to keep these ‘illegal’ pilgrims in control were ineffective throughout the colonial period, but were nevertheless put in place. 30 Thus, control and legibility remained an important objective of the state, but was now complemented with motives of a more paternalistic attitude toward colonial subjects.

In the 1930s, control evolved into active engagement in organization. Already in the late 19th century did the colonial government in West Africa help to organize the hajj, by contracting French shipping companies such as Cyprien Fabre to facilitate cheap transport. 31 From 1935 onwards, the colonial government began to organize an “official” hajj for West Africans by steamship, in line with a similar policy inaugurated in North Africa in 1931. 32 Departing from Dakar, West African pilgrims traveling with this state organized pilgrimage joined the official North African pilgrim convoy in Casablanca. At the end of World War II the colonial administration in French West Africa started to use airplanes in the organization of the official pilgrimage to transport a small number of high-ranking African hajjis, such as future Tunisian president Habib Bourguiba. 33 In the early 1950s this official hajj by airplane was extended to less important pilgrims through the intervention of commercial airlines, such as TAI, UAT, and Air France. Originally, the numbers of departing pilgrims were small, not surpassing a few dozen in the 1930s, but in the 1940s and 1950s the organization of the official hajj by the state grew to become one of the rare true services the colonial state was delivering to its subjects, used by about a few thousand French West African pilgrims a year in the 1950s.

The main reason for this state involvement in the organization of the pilgrimage was to give practical body to a particular discourse on the French colonial presence in the Muslim world. It was to promote a vision of a France benevolent to Islam and its Muslim subjects, projected outwards to a Muslim world perceived to be hostile to France. But through the creation of an image of a hostile outside Muslim world, the idea was also created of an inner Muslim world, a French Muslim world, inhabited by Musulmans français , who were supposed to be content with this status. 34 These Muslims, as subjects of the French empire, had a right to protection, and a right to and freedom in practicing their faith, but as French Muslims. By organizing the pilgrimage and sponsoring the pilgrimage of influential religious leaders, such as the sheikhs of Sufi orders and reputed marabouts , the colonial state hoped to control these men further and positively influence their vision of France. Other categories who benefitted from the official hajj were active soldiers and veterans of outstanding service, ‘traditional’ chiefs and other high-ranking colonial personnel. In his speech at the departure of the official pilgrimage convoy from Dakar in 1946, the Governor General formulated this vision as follows:

You will meet many pilgrims of other nationalities. You will have to make an effort to be worthy representatives of France. If you are permitted to leave, it is because the government is sure that where ever one speaks of France, you will show your pride in being her sons. 35

After World War II, the organization of the hajj found a new ground. As the French welfare state was under construction in France, the state-subsidized official hajj, which yearly cost millions of francs, formed a colonial outpost of this welfare state. Just as French unemployed, sick, or unfortunate, were entitled to financial aid through insurance and social security, so should African pilgrims on hajj, from the outset, be protected against possible damage and perils through state organization. Organizing an official hajj became the outer consequence of a logic in which “French Muslims” had a right to an orderly, sanitary, and safeguarded “French” pilgrimage. 36

The desire to make the pilgrimage controllable did not stop at the organization of the official hajj, nor was it the sole concern of the colonial bureaucracies. As indicated above, the introduction of large-scale and relatively fast mass transport of pilgrims in the 19th century, notably steamships, had led to waves of epidemics, especially cholera, across the globe. This had led to the first international regulations of pilgrimage transport and its related health issues at the initiative of the Ottoman Empire in 1894. Quarantine stations had been installed off the Egyptian, Sudanese, and Arabian coasts. With the improvement of vaccination methods, vaccinations became required for all pilgrims, to be given prior to departure. It was especially the Saudi kingdom that would impose more state control over the pilgrimage and the pilgrims as the number of pilgrims grew. In 1926, two years after the Saudis took control of Mecca, a Royal Decree made it obligatory for all pilgrims to hold passports indicating their nationality. 37 The French and British authorities complied, but it posed them with a particular problem that grew more complex over the decades. Their colonial subjects had a nationality, but no citizenship, which in Europe is inherently bound to nationality and to the right to hold a passport. With the gradual transfer of political and civil rights between 1946 and 1958, the status of the required passport which French West African pilgrims held upon entering Saudi Arabia, changed and grew in status, until in 1958, all pilgrims held formal passports of the French state, indicating their (almost) full citizenship in the French Community. 38 Apart from the vaccinations and the Saudi required passport, pilgrims demanding formal permission to leave on the hajj, regardless of their means of transport, had to pay a fixed caution to the Bank of West Africa to ensure the costs of their repatriation if this would become needed, as well as a sum of money that would be returned to them as traveler’s checks upon arrival in Djeddah, so as to ensure them against theft. Furthermore, they had to provide proof of good conduct, and a number of other documents, including an application form, perhaps symbolic of colonial control (see Figure 1). 39

The official hajj by airplane from West Africa was abandoned in 1952, when it was left to the free market. The colonial state simply stipulated conditions and arranged the paperwork. A similar trend was visible in North Africa, where the official hajj was abandoned and left to the free market in 1956. There, bus companies quickly took over the pilgrimage market. 40 Private and state owned companies such as French Air France and UAT, but also Air Liban and Sabena competed in the organization of affordable charter flights to Mecca, ensuring a safe, quick, and comfortable trip. The introduction of the airplane had even greater consequences for the organization and scale of the hajj. The price of hajj travel diminished even further. Not only the sums to be paid for transport and lodging decreased (compared against those of boat trips). As total travel time decreased from months to days, the cost of maintenance of those left behind, as well as the amount of lost income and security in livelihood due to absence diminished considerably. These arguments hold even more strongly for female pilgrims. 41 Prior to World War II it was so exceptional for women to undertake the pilgrimage that when one did this became major news to the authorities and the community. But with the introduction of the steamship, their numbers already rose, as more women accompanied their husbands. 42 The introduction of the motorcar led to a further rise for partly the same reasons. Women were expected to take care of their husbands on the journey. As labor migration became part of the overland journey, it became more desirable for couples to stay together. At present, more than 50% of all pilgrims in Mecca are female. 43 This development is beyond doubt directly linked to the introduction of new means of transport.

Figure 1:

The formal pilgrim form developed by the colonial authorities for the offfijicial hajj ( supra ).

Citation: African Diaspora 5, 2 (2012) ; 10.1163/18725457-12341237

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From the perspective of a historian of West Africa, another element is interesting in the hajj by airplane: the prevalence of considerations of capital and enterprise over class, race, and colonial hegemony in the aeronautical hajj market. Those West Africans who could afford to pay the plane ticket were welcome aboard, without distinction of their colonial status as subjects or the consideration that they, not being white and European, should travel less comfortably. The racial distinction made in the colonial world on trains and boats between European and African passengers was not made. The hajj was simply far too interesting a market for the emerging civil aviation companies to leave unexploited. Given the general atmosphere of luxury, class, and wealth that surrounded air travel until the 1960s at least, and the absolute and relative costs of flying, the rise and decline of this market is further proof of the decline of the African economy since the 1950s. In the 1950s, when commercial passenger aviation took off, the African market was large and lucrative enough to be of interest to most European and Middle Eastern airlines. But despite the decrease in the costs of air travel in the decades since 1960, the relative number of African passengers has not risen as dramatically as in Europe, North America, or Asia, regardless of destination. Nevertheless, the market for aviatory pilgrimage rose in absolute numbers.

After independence, the post-colonial states of West Africa continued to organize the pilgrimage for their subjects. They did so partly for different reasons. Fear of anti-colonial ideologies no longer played any role, and neither did the idea of benevolence toward Islam as a discursive tool of Empire. Although more research in the post-colonial history of the pilgrimage is needed, it can be safely said that the main reasons can be found in the construction of political patronage, a clear continuation of the colonial period but its clientele grew and diversified. Apart from marabouts , traditional chiefs and army veterans, now loyal party members and the entourage of the head of state benefitted most from sponsoring, while the organization of the hajj by the state remained a small service rendered to the population at large. But where the application for the official hajj had been a bureaucratic procedure open to most in colonial times, it now became a more informal procedure, depending on contacts with the regime. Thus, in Mali in the 1970s, a number of influential businessmen managed to charter Air Mali airplanes for below cost prices to fly to Mecca on hajj, and even for some time every Friday to attend Friday prayers in Mecca. 44 In post-colonial Niger, demands to benefit from the official hajj had to be made directly to president Diori. 45 To make the difference from the colonial period clear, consider this formless but very formal letter written in post-colonial times:

Malam Maïjalaleni Tankary in Tahoua

To Mister Diori Hamani, President of the Republic of Niger in Niamey

Tahoua, 8 March 1961

Dear Diori,

. . . I have been informed that you have inquired after me. I thank you for this compliment and I wish you an incomparable and unchangeable reign. I sincerely regret having missed you and I pray to God that your majesty deigns to reflect, as in the past, upon our unshakeable loyalty. You may forgive me my impertinence to ask you for a free return journey to Mecca. Thank you. It is part of your grandeur to approve each “penurious” a free pilgrimage . 46

From the 1980s onwards, the organization of the hajj became partly ‘privatized’ again. Competing with the state organized pilgrimage, specialized travel agencies offered package deals including all administrative arrangements, travel, and lodging, for prices starting at 1.500.000 CFA (in 2005). In both colonial and post-colonial times, those pilgrims who left with the official hajj but without having been invited by the state had to pay their fare. Together with the costs of vaccination, the passport, and other accompanying paperwork, this required a substantial amount of money not all pilgrims were able to pay up front. Therefore, many pilgrims, especially those inhabiting the Central Sahel, for whom traveling to Dakar to take the boat entailed traveling half way in the wrong direction anyway, kept travelling over land, taking the Sahel roads.

The most important explanation for this preference is that travel along these roads to perform the pilgrimage was linked to labor migration. This link is intimate and manifold. It cannot simply be stated that economic motives prevailed over religions ones in these journeys, or vice versa. According to Maliki law, pilgrims could earn the needed travel fare along the way, which meant poor Africans could set out for Mecca over land, while working on their way ( supra ). If gainful employment could be found for periods of time longer than necessary to pay for the next leg of the journey, then this of course tempted many pilgrims to prolong their stops. West Africans were well aware of the price of labor in large parts of Africa, and acted accordingly. 47 Thus, in the 1930s, the road to Mecca led first south to Ethiopia. As part of their resistance tactics against the Italian occupation of their country, many Ethiopians refused to work on Italian infrastructural projects and plantations. The Italian government therefore attracted pilgrims cum immigrants with high wages. Pilgrims simply calculated that by traveling first to Ethiopia, the amount of time spent on labor along the way to and from Mecca could be considerably reduced, in comparison to working in either French or British colonies. 48 The most durable and consistent labor stopover along the road to Mecca proved to be the Sudanese Gezira, where the large cotton plantations attracted large numbers of pilgrims. Many of these pilgrims left without vaccinations or legal papers. Maliki Muslim law stipulated they could do so since the 1st century DH, but French, international, and especially Saudi laws of the 20th century AD stipulated that they could not. Many pilgrims believed the sanitary and legal requirements were French or British inventions intended to stop pilgrims from performing their religious duties. Those who left without these requirements found out too late that the colonial powers had only complied with Saudi state demands and that their disobedience effectively blocked their access to Mecca. Returning home without the desired status of hajj was unthinkable for many of these pilgrims. Hence, many never reached Mecca and never returned home, becoming ‘permanent pilgrims,’ as Bawa Yamba called them, living their lives as labor migrants in Sudan, Chad, or elsewhere. 49 In this way, religious and economic motives combined to shape people’s live trajectories along the trans-Sahel road.

A second explanation for the preference for the trans-Sahel roads is the introduction of new means of transport in the Sahel, especially the train. These railways were primarily intended to evacuate cash crops from the Sahel to the coastal ports. In French West Africa, the construction of the railway lines from Dakar to Saint Louis and to Bamako, between 1881 and 1934, ensured the transport of peanuts and cotton to Europe. The railway line from Kano to Lagos, completed in 1911, served as the main transport outlet for both Nigerian and Nigerien peanuts and other crops. 50 In Sudan, the railway line connecting Port Sudan at the Red Sea coast with El Obeid in Kordofan was constructed between 1906 and 1911. 51 Although primarily intended for military and commercial purposes, these railroads did transport passengers. It was especially the Sudanese railroad, linking the Central Sahel directly to the Red Sea coast that attracted pilgrims to the trans-Sahel roads. Until the 1930s, pilgrims traveled essentially on foot or mount and pack animal and, in Nigeria, sometimes by train, to the Sudanese railway head at El Obeid and, if they could afford it, from there by train to the ports of the Red Sea. Those who could not afford the ticket simply followed the tracks. The growing road transport sector in both French West Africa and Nigeria, connected to the railroad systems, added to the appeal of the trans-Sahel roads.

The first pilgrimages from West Africa by car and train date from the early 1930s. In 1934 for example, Ouage, the village chief of Kanambakachy close to Maradi in Niger, rode his horse to Katsina, where he took a lorry to Kano, from whence he went to Fort Lamy (N’djamena) by truck. In Fort Lamy he boarded a voiture touriste bound for Abeché at the Chad-Sudan border. These voitures touriste were essentially lorries transformed into coaches by having benches installed in the loading bank. In Abéché he changed to a lorry bound for El Obeid. From there he continued by train to Suakin via Khartoum. The whole journey coming and going took him 150 days, where the journey afoot would probably have taken more than double or triple the time. Ouage agreed so much with traveling by car that on his way back he bought a second-hand voiture touriste himself in El Obeid. Unfortunately, the car broke down repeatedly and he had to leave it behind in Kano. 52

After the Second World War, the transport of pilgrims by motorcar took off in earnest, leading to a heyday decade of overland pilgrimage. There existed a number of companies specialized in the transport of pilgrims by truck or voiture touriste , such as the Nigerian “Tarzan Transport.” 53 The fare of the journey, as well as the roads taken and the needed travel time, depended of course on the point of departure, but also on the means of transport used and partly on the season in which the pilgrims traveled. In French West Africa, two cities functioned as gathering points: Niamey in Niger and Fort Lamy in Chad. Pilgrims would gather in Niamey to travel onwards through Nigeria, making use of the roads and railroads there, converging south to Fort Lamy at the southern shore of Lake Chad, from where the road led to the Sudanese railroad head in El-Obeid. But during the decade between the mid-1940s and mid-1950s, the trans-Sahel road was positioned to the north of the lake, leading through Nguigmi and Mao via Ati to Abéché in the dryer Sahel-Sahara steppes of Wadaï and on to Al Fasher in Darfur. The Muslim lunar calendar is absolute, which means that the month of Dhû l-Hijja, the month of the hajj, shifts through the seasons. In this period, Dhû l-Hijja fell such that West African pilgrims calculating their travels to arrive in time in Mecca to perform the hajj had to travel in the Sahel’s rainy season, which turned southern passageways close to the lake into impassable swamps.

I would like to illustrate these developments with the pilgrimages of al-Hajj Alkaidi Touré. Born in Timbuktu around 1898, Alkaidi Touré had moved to Niamey in the early 1920s. There he started a commercial enterprise that would grow so successful that he opened branches in Bamako and Gao. Alkaidi’s main activities were import-export and transport, a combination well-known in the Sahel. A Muslim from the prestigious Touré clan of Timbuktu, Alkaidi stood in the West African tradition of Muslim merchants. But from the 20th century onwards, pilgrimage would become so intimately linked to the identity of these merchants, that they became known as alhazai : hajji’s. 54 In 1938 Alkaidi performed the pilgrimage for the first time, traveling over land. 55 Not much is known about his first pilgrimage, but his second journey is well documented. Preparations for this journey started in 1945, when Alkaidi requested the importation and purchase of two Citroën T.45 trucks and sufficient gasoil to make the journey. These requests were necessary due to war shortages and denied for the same reason. A year later his request was granted and Touré could set out with his group on August 2, 1946. Touré had married four wives whom he took along on this pilgrimage, together with his relatives and some relatives of his wives. The group also included three affluent traditional chiefs, who each contributed 15,000 Francs to the sustenance of their poorer fellow travelers, who themselves paid according to their means. 56 They took the south bound road across Nigeria and Cameroon to Fort Lamy, and from there to El Obeid, where they would take the train to Port Sudan. Alkaidi knew the road, as he had already performed the overland hajj in 1938. He therefore knew approximately how long it would take to reach their goal and when to depart. Their journey would take 42 days from Niamey to Djeddah. Alkaidi was an active member of the Tijaniyya brotherhood and his youngest wife, Madani Sy, had maternal relatives in the area around lake Chad, while from her father’s side she was related to the family of Hajj Umar Tall. These affiliations, together with other relations and the connections of the traditional chiefs and marabouts in their convoy ensured lodging and help along the way. 57 In the decade between the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s, pilgrims to Mecca had to face the rains. Only the stretch between Zaria and Maiduguri in Nigeria was passable. The roads through Chad were mud tracks, changing into sand dunes in Darfur. According to Lamine Touré, Alkaidi’s oldest son, who worked as a driver for the family company for many years and who drove one of the trucks on the 1946 journey, the sandy roads in Sudan could only be taken by Ford trucks equipped with a V8 motor. 58 Alkaidi was forced to rent these Ford trucks in Sudan to travel to El Obeid, leaving his own cars behind. They completed their journey that same year. In 1949, Alkaidi performed the hajj for the third time, this time traveling by airplane. 59 In 1950, he organized a new pilgrim convoy over land. It seems that Alkaidi wanted to venture out and make the organization of the pilgrimage part of his regular business. Alkaidi had little posters and flyers written in Arabic spread throughout Niger and French Sudan to announce that he would organize a pilgrimage convoy over land, for the sum of 100,000 francs, all included. In exchange Alkaidi would arrange all travel details, including the administrative paperwork and bank details. He left on August 3, 1950 with about 70 people, including a number of traditional chiefs and influential marabouts . Unfortunately, this journey would be less successful despite the fact that Touré disposed of Ford V8 trucks, which he had especially imported. The rains were so heavy that year that even these cars could not pass and the group remained stuck in Abéché. 60 This debacle led to some quarrels as Alkaidi left the group to perform the hajj himself, although most pilgrims of his convoy could not follow him and had to return to Fort Lamy. 61 Later in life, in 1967, Alkaidi would travel to India to visit fellow Tijani sufis whom he had met in Mecca, but that is beyond the scope of this paper.

Figure 2:

  • Alkaidi Touré and his men howl a truck through the mud along the Sahel road. Courtesy of the National Archives of Niger.

Changing Times, Changing Space, Changing Roads, Changing Values

New means of transport altered the urban social and economic topography of the Sahara and Sahel in significant ways. With the replacing of the trans-Saharan roads by the trans-Sahel road, Saharan towns that had functioned as stops along the way, such as Taroudant in the Moroccan South, Timimoun in the Algerian Touat, or Sebha in the Libyan Fezzan, fell in decline. At the same time, hitherto lost backwaters in the Sahel, such as Mao, Ati, or Rigrig gained significance as the trans-Sahel route developed, while older cities which had been in decline, such as Abéché, the capital of the Wadaï Sultanate, rose to new prominence. But these places too, could dwindle as the roads shifted elsewhere to facilitate the passage of the trucks during the wet season, or as tarmac roads were laid, creating new junctions. This altering social geography became of course even more dramatic with the introduction of aviation. The flights to Mecca in the late 1940s were maintained with Junkers and DC3 Dakotas, which had to make regular stops for fuel. Hence, a relatively fine meshed network of airfields existed from which pilgrims could embark. The Douglas DC4 Skymasters and Boeing Constellations of the 1950s had a considerably longer range but they could not yet fly directly from the main capitals of West Africa to Djeddah airport. Hence, a smaller number of larger cities remained functional as main airports for the pilgrimage. These came together in Niamey, which functioned as a hub from where flights were direct to Djeddah. This changed Niamey from a small administrative capital with hardly any local economic significance to a hub for the travel and commerce that always accompanied the pilgrimage. Zinder, until then the commercial capital of Niger and the largest city in the colony, lost importance to dwindle to a regional trade port with Nigeria. From the 1960s onwards long-distance flights from West African capitals directly to Jeddah were normal practice, which again changed the configuration of the pilgrimage. To give one example, Gao airport in the North of present-day Mali was an aeronautical hub between West Africa, Europe, and the Middle East during the 1940s and 1950s, with flights to Paris, Bamako, Dakar, and Niamey. After independence, the international function of Gao airport was lost, but it remained functional on internal flights until the 1980s, transporting pilgrims first to Bamako, and from there to Djeddah.

The changes in means of transport also reflect changing attitudes towards the hajj and what it represents. In ideology, the members of the ‘Umma , the Muslim world community, are equal in the face of God. However, the inequality between pilgrims found expression in their journey to Mecca. In the 19th century all pilgrims, rich or poor, largely had to endure the same hardships on the road, whether trans-Saharan or trans-Sahel. There were of course differences in social and economic standing, which found expression in the pilgrimage caravan. Richer and more powerful pilgrims rode up front, leaving the poorer pilgrims to deal with their dust. Many powerful pilgrims traveled with their servants who labored to their masters’ convenience along the way. Then there were differences in lodging and food. 62 But even though not all could afford to have a camel or other riding mount, all pilgrims, even the richer ones, had to walk at least parts of the road and sand storms or raiding parties were equally unpleasant to all. Thus, all shared equally in the sufferings of the pilgrimage. The new means of transport changed the ideal equality among pilgrims on the hajj, reflecting the inequality in worldly status and buying power in new ways. As a publicity poster of the Air Company UAT read:

A journey to Mecca in great comfort and speed with UAT’s modern and powerful Douglas DC4 four motor aeroplanes will underline the great prestige of those who sport the title of Hadji 63

This inequality has now diminished again, as the vast majority of pilgrims today arrive by plane.

The commodification of the hajj journey from the 1930s onwards led to discussions on the merit of pilgrimage and even to a measurable inflation. To the pious, the hajj is intended as a journey combining the physical and the spiritual. Hardship and privation for the love of God on the pilgrimage are essential to strengthen the faith in God and to mortify the flesh. This vision is in sharp contrast to the luxurious and speedy travel of the 20th century. What, it was now discussed, is the merit of the journey to Mecca by boat, car, or airplane on a spiritual level. Some West African Muslims adopted the view that the hajj was not fully performed and valid until one had performed the journey three times. 64 Until today, very pious West Africans hold the hajj to be a journey to be made afoot or at least by car, once seen itself as a luxury form of travel sparking these same discussions. Thus, the overland road has never been totally abandoned, despite the dangers this road now again holds for pilgrims crossing Chad and Sudan. Travel by car, once an innovation, is now an unquestioned merit.

Figure 3:

A competitive and non-discriminatory market: U.A.T. publicity poster for an airborne pilgrimage. Courtesy of the National Archives of Niger.

The 19th and 20th centuries saw radical changes in the performance of the hajj from West Africa, due to changing political, economic, social, and technical circumstances on a world scale. In the 19th century and before, the vast majority of pilgrims were men from the upper strata of society. Merchants combined the hajj with trade, scholars with study, and rulers with politics. Most combined all three social positions and all three goals with their pilgrimage. Political circumstances worldwide were decisive for the decisions these 19th-century pilgrims made with regards to their itineraries, business ventures, and stays abroad. The globalization of European wars, the transformations and modernization of Muslim powers (both in the Sahel and elsewhere), and especially the start of the European conquest of (North) Africa played a crucial role in their itineraries. But the internationalization of state relations also had an impact. The 1894 international agreements on the transport of pilgrims, including quarantine measures decisively transformed pilgrims’ fare and welfare. The changes in (maritime) technique showed their future role, as pilgrims chose to travel with European maritime (steamship) companies from the Mediterranean onwards.

The 20th century saw even more dramatic changes in the performance of the pilgrimage. After the jihad campaigns of the 19th century had already transformed the religious landscape of the Sahel, the region’s inclusion in the world economy and in European empires led to mass conversion to Islam. Combined with new labor relations, new forms of wealth, new state structures, as well as new means of transport, this led to dramatic shifts in pilgrim social demography and to a spectacular growth in their numbers. A new middle class of colonial civil servants and military joined the old and partly transformed elite of merchants, scholars, and leaders. More importantly a new class of agricultural laborers joined these upper strata of society. While new labor-intensive cash crops such as peanuts and especially cotton were introduced, plantation slavery was abolished, increasing the need for labor in the Sahel, but also freeing laborers to travel where salaries were highest.

The mobility of labor and religion was greatly facilitated by the increasing availability of mechanical means of transport. Their presence, especially that of the fixed railroads, radically altered the roads pilgrims took, away from the Sahara, toward the Sahel itself. This in turn reshaped the urban economic and social topography of the Sahara and Sahel further, as cities rose and fell in importance along the different roads taken. The rapidity and scale of mass transport led to a spectacular fall in the price of the pilgrimage, especially when we do not only take the travel fare into consideration, but also the price of absence at home. This latter decrease both in time and in money, as well as the labor migration which many combined with the pilgrimage, placed the hajj in reach of West African Women, whose participation rose from close to zero to over half of the total amount of pilgrims at present. The changes in means of transport also reflect changing attitudes towards the hajj and what it represents. To the pious, the hajj is intended as a journey combining the physical and the spiritual. Hardship and privation for the love of God on the pilgrimage are essential to strengthen the faith in God and to mortify the flesh. The mobile lifestyle is part of a vision on the transient state of the human being between this world and the next. This vision is in sharp contrast to the luxurious and speedy travel of those who come by boat or airplane.

Studying its interference in the organization of the hajj provides insight into the transformation of the colonial and post-colonial state, as it shifted its focus from domination and control to welfare and patronage. In many ways, the organization of the hajj reflects the organization of political patronage in the African colony and post-colony, and the aspirations to rationalize and modernize the religious domain in Africa and the Middle East. In the 19th century knowledge of international politics, the situation on the road and the required ritual prayers were necessary to perform the hajj. In the 20th century knowledge of ritual remained necessary, but it was complemented with knowledge of and compliance with state bureaucracy, rather than security and politics. ‘Illegal’ pilgrimage journeys became more and more difficult from the late 1930s onwards, with the construction of the state in Saudi Arabia and the modernization of state services in French West Africa, Egypt, and Sudan.

As a last point, consider this simple observation. In the 1830s Ahmad ibn Thuwair al-Janna traveled only once to Mecca, a single journey taking him four years of his life and he did not linger. Between 1938 and 1950, a bit more than a decade, Alkaidi Touré performed the hajj four times, traveling from and to his hometown of Niamey every journey. By the mid-20th century, the hajj was no longer the journey of a lifetime as it had been a short century earlier.

1) ‘Hadjdj,’ Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill 1953), 121-125.

2) Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Ministry of Hajj, Hajj and Umrah Statistics. http://www.hajinformation.com/main/l.htm . Last accessed 15/10/2011

3) Botte ( 2010 : 99). Faroqhi ( 1994 : 46) lists numbers in the 200,000 for the 16th and 17th centuries, with a decrease in the 19th century, possibly explained by the influence of colonial conquests and subsequent economic downturns in the Islamic world.

4) Birks ( 1978 ); Bawa Yamba ( 1995 ).

5) Bianchi ( 2004 ); Christelow ( 1987 ); Faroqhi ( 1994 ); Loimeier ( 1988 ); Medugbon ( 1982 ).

6) This study will focus on the pilgrimage from the Francophone Sahel.

7) The timing varies between the Senegalese coast, where European presence was much earlier established and more direct, and Niger and Northern Nigeria, where European presence was established much later.

8) Klein ( 1998 ); Lovejoy ( 2005 ); Searcy ( 2010 ).

9) Cruise O’brien ( 1971 ).

10) Hopkins ( 1973 ; 2009 ).

11) Launay & Soares ( 1999 ); Peterson ( 2011 ); Zakari ( 2010 ).

12) al-Naqar ( 1972 : xvii).

13) Bawa Yamba ( 1995 ); Birks ( 1978 ); Hino ( 1986 ).

14) Juynboll ( 1930 ).

15) Lydon ( 2004 : 43).

16) Faroqhi ( 1994 ).

17) ‘Mahmal,’ Encyclopedia of Islam vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill 1986: 44-46).

18) Sabini ( 1981 ).

19) Lydon ( 2009 : 158).

20) Fisher ( 1988 ).

21) Boubeker & Rouzee ( 1915 ).

22) Norris ( 1977 ).

23) Ibidem, 25.

24) Ibidem, 104.

25) Birks ( 1975 , 1977 , 1978 ).

26) Christelow ( 1987 ). The British, the Dutch, and the Soviet Union developed similar policies. So far, there exists no comparative study of these colonial hajj policies.

27) Christelow ( 1987 ); Mbacke (2005: 220).

28) Snouck-Hurgronje (2007).

29) Triaud ( 1997 ).

30) It is therefore impossible to give any meaningful numbers on the total amount of pilgrims from West Africa over the period concerned. Only the number of ‘official’ pilgrims ( infra ) could be known, but this is research still to be undertaken.

31) Mbacke (2005).

32) ANN 4E9.1 Pelerinage à la Mecque 1924-1934, and Christelow ( 1987 ).

33) Mbacké (2005) and ANN 4E12.12 Extraits du rapport du ministère des affaires étrangères sur le pèlerinage à la Mecque 1946. Bourguiba made the official pilgrimage by Junkers 52 airplane in 1946.

34) Pervillé (1997) and Weil ( 2003 ).

35) Paris-Dakar 26/09/1946, cited in Mbacké (2005: 247-48).

36) Mann & Lecocq ( 2007 ).

37) National Archives of Mali (ANM) RNI-4 E-494 Circulaire relative au pèlerinage à la Mecque 1928.

38) Mann & Lecocq ( 2007 ).

39) ANN 4E13-15 Colonie du Niger, pelerinage à la Mecque 1951. Prior to the mid-1940s, demands did not take this form format, but consisted of short letters, often written by a local French administrator in the name of the subject filing the demand.

40) ANN 4E14.1 Circulaires au sujet de l’organisation du pèlerinage à la Mecque par voie aérienne 1951-1953. The official hajj by boat remained existent. Christelow ( 1987 ).

41) Cooper ( 1999 ). Until WWII the vast majority of pilgrims were men. At present, over 50% of pilgrims are women Unfortunately, I have no space in this article to elaborate on the very important gender dimensions to the changes in pilgrim demography and their meaning for individual pilgrims. This dimension requires an article of its own, which I hope to write in the future.

42) Mbacké (2005: 236).

43) Bianchi ( 2004 ): appendix tables.

44) Amselle ( 1977 ); Hock ( 1999 ).

45) Observation based on research in the National Archives of Niger (ANN), series DAPA 226, 227, and 237: organization of the hajj in the 1960s.

46) ANN: DAPA 227 Pélerinage à la Mecque 1962. The French original read “musquine” for “penurious,” which the reader had circled and translated “talaka”: the Hausa word for the weak and needy, who usually seek patronage from the powerful.

47) Gary-Tounkara ( 2003 ).

48) ANN 4E10.8 Rapports sur les pelerins venant de la Mecque 1930-1936.

49) Bawa Yamba ( 1995 : 142-43).

50) Baier ( 1980 ).

51) http://www.sudanrailways.gov.sd/en/history.htm

52) ANN 4E10.8 Rapport sur les pèlerins revenant de La Mecque 1930-1939.

53) ANN 4E12.14: Rapport de M. Brouin, administrateur chargé d’accompagner un convoi de Pèlerins par voie de terre.

54) Grégoire ( 1986 ).

55) ANN 4E12.3 Pélérinage à la Mecque: dossiers constitués par: Tahirou Made, Abdou Aouta, Elkaidi Touré, Andjer ben Ahmet, Mocktar ben Cheriffe 1938.

56) Interview with the Touré family (group interview), Niamey 01/30/2005.

57) Interview with Madani Sy, Niamey 01/30/2005.

58) Interview with Lamine Touré, Niamey.

59) ANN 4E13.7 Télégrammes et corrrespondance divers au sujet de l’ organisation du pèlerinage par voie aérienne.

60) Interview with the Touré family (group interview), Niamey 01/30/2005.

61) Zakari (2011: 167-68).

62) Faroqhi ( 1994 ).

63) ANN 4E14.03 UAT liste des pelerins aériens 1952.

64) Gouilly ( 1952 : 193).

al-Naqar Umar The Pilgrimage Tradition in West Africa, an Historical Study with Special Reference to the Nineteenth Century 1972 Khartoum Khartoum University Press

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Amselle Jean-Loup Les Négociants De La Savane: Histoire Et Organisation Sociale Des Kooroko (Mali) 1977 Paris Editions Anthropos

Baier Stephen An Economic History of Central Niger 1980 Oxford Clarendon Press

Bawa Yamba C. Permanent Pilgrims: The Role of Pilgrimage in the Lives of West African Muslims in Sudan 1995 Vol. 15 Edinburgh Edinburgh University Press International African Library

Bianchi Robert Guest of God, Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World 2004 Oxford Oxford University Press

Birks J.S. Kozinski L. & Prothero R. “Overland Pilgrimage in the Savanna Lands of Africa” People on the Move, Studies on Internal Migration 1975 London Methuen & Co 297 308

Birks J.S. “The Mecca Pilgrimage by West African Pastoral Nomads” Journal of Modern African Studies 1977 15 no. 1 47 58

Birks J.S. Across the Savannas to Mecca: The Overland Pilgrimage Route from West Africa 1978 London Hurst

Botte Roger Esclavages et abolitions en terres d’Islam 2010 Paris André Versaille éditeur

Boubeker Hajj & Rouzee “Voyage d’un Soudanais à la Mecque en 1816” La Revue des Colonies et des Questions Coloniales 1915 9 227 31

Christelow Allan “Political Ends and Means of Transport in the Colonial North African Pilgrimage” The Maghreb Review 1987 12 no. 3/4 84 89

Cooper Barbara “The Strength in the Song: Muslim Personhood, Audible Capital, and Hausa Women’s Performance of the Hajj” Social Text 1999 17 no. 3 87 109

Cruise O’brien Donal The Mourides of Senegal: The Political and Economic Organization of an Islamic Brotherhood 1971 Oxford Clarendon Press

Faroqhi Suraiya Pilgrims & Sultans – the Haj under the Ottomans 1994 London I.B. Tauris

Fisher Allan & Fisher Humphrey Slavery and Muslim Society in Africa: The Institution in Saharan and Sudanic Africa, and the Trans-Saharan Trade 1970 London Hurst

Fisher Humphrey Slavery in the History of Muslim Black Africa 1988 London Hurst

Gary-Tounkara Daouda “Circulation et réseaux migratoires soudanais-maliens en Afrique de l’ouest (1932-1974)” Migrations Société 2003 15 no. 90 67 82

Gouilly Alphonse L’Islam dans l’Afrique occidentale francaise 1952 Paris Editions Larose

Grégoire Emmanuel Les Alhazai de Maradi (Niger): histoire d’un groupe de riches marchands sahéliens 1986 Paris Editions de l’ORSTOM

‘Hadjdj,’ 121 125 Shorter Encyclopedia of Islam (Leiden: Brill 1953)

Hino Shun’ya Tomikawa Morimichi “Pilgrimage and Migration of the West African Muslims: A Case Study of the Fellata People in the Sudan” Sudan Sahel Studies 1986 Tokyo Institute for the Study of Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa 15 109

Hock Carsten Fliegen die Seelen der Heiligen? Muslimische Reform und staatliche Autorität in der Republik Mali seit 1960 1999 Berlin Klaus Schwartz Verlag

Hopkins A.G. An Economic History of West Africa 1973 London Longman

Hopkins A.G. “The New Economic History of Africa” The Journal of African History 2009 50 no. 2 155 177

Juynboll Th Handleiding tot de kennis van de Mohammedaansche wet volgens de leer der Sjâfi’itische school 1930 Leiden Brill

Klein Martin Slavery and Colonial Rule in French West Africa 1998 Cambridge Cambridge University Press

Launay Robert & Soares Benjamin “The Formation of an ‘Islamic Sphere’ in French Colonial West Africa” Economy and Society 1999 28 497 519

Loimeier Roman “Das ‘Nigerian Pilgrimage Scheme’: Zum Versuch, den Hagg in Nigeria zu Organisieren” Afrika Spektrum 1988 23 no. 2 201 214

Lovejoy Paul Slavery, Commerce and Production in the Sokoto Caliphate of West Africa 2005 Trenton Africa World Press

Lydon Ghislaine Reese Scott “Inkwells of the Sahara: Reflections on the Production of Islamic Knowledge in Bilâd Shinqît” The Transmission of Learning in Islamic Africa 2004 Leiden Brill 39 71

Lydon Ghislaine On Trans-Saharan Trails. Islamic Law, Trade Networks, and Cross-Cultural Exchange in Nineteenth-Century Western Africa 2009 Cambridge Cambridge University Press

‘Mahmal,’ 44 46 Encyclopedia of Islam vol. 6 (Leiden: Brill 1986)

Mann Gregory & Lecocq Baz “Between Empire, Umma, and the Muslim Third World: The French Union and African Pilgrims to Mecca, 1946-1958” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 2007 27 no. 2 367 383

Mbacké Khadim Le pèlerinage aux lieux saints de l’Islam: participation sénégalaise 1886-1986 2005 Dakar Presses Universitaires de Dakar

Medugbon A.K. Clarke J. & Kosinski L. “The Nigerian Pilgrimage to Mecca” Redistribution of Population in Africa 1982 London Heinemann

Norris Harry T. The Pilgrimage of Ahmad, Son of the Little Bird of Paradise – an Account of a 19th Century Pilgrimage from Mauritania to Mecca 1977 Warminster Aris & Phillips

Pervillé Guy “Comment appeler les habitants de l’Algérie avant la définition légale d’une nationalité algérienne?” Cahiers de la Méditerranée 1997 54 55 60

Peterson Brian Islamization from Below: The Making of Muslim Communities in Rural French Sudan, 1880-1960 2011 New Haven Yale University Press

Sabini John Armies in the Sand – the Struggle for Mecca and Medina 1981 London Thames and Hudson

Searcy Kim “The Sudanese Mahdi’s Attitudes toward Slavery and Emancipation” Islamic Africa 2010 1 no. 1 63 83

Snouck Hurgronje Christiaan Monahan J.H. Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century 2007 2nd ed Leiden Brill

Triaud Jean-Louis Robinson David & Triaud Jean-Louis “Le crépuscule des ‘Affaires Musulmanes’ en AOF, 1950-1956” Le temps des marabouts – itinéraires et stratégies islamiques en Afrique occidentale française V. 1880-1960 1997 Paris Karthala 493 519

Weil Patrick “Le statut des Musulmans en Algérie coloniale: une nationalité française dénaturée” EUI Working Paper HEC 2003 Florence European University Institute, Department of History and Civilization

Zakari Maïkoréma L’islam dans l’espace nigérien.Tome 1: des origines (vii e siècle) à 1960 2010 Paris L’Harmattan

Birks ( 1978 ); Bawa Yamba (1995).

Bianchi ( 2004 ); Christelow (1987); Faroqhi (1994); Loimeier (1988); Medugbon (1982).

Klein ( 1998 ); Lovejoy (2005); Searcy (2010).

Cruise O’brien ( 1971 ).

Launay & Soares ( 1999 ); Peterson (2011); Zakari (2010).

Bawa Yamba ( 1995 ); Birks (1978); Hino (1986).

Juynboll ( 1930 ).

Faroqhi ( 1994 ).

Sabini ( 1981 ).

Fisher ( 1988 ).

Boubeker & Rouzee ( 1915 ).

Norris ( 1977 ).

Birks (1975, 1977 , 1978).

Christelow ( 1987 ). The British, the Dutch, and the Soviet Union developed similar policies. So far, there exists no comparative study of these colonial hajj policies.

Christelow ( 1987 ); Mbacke (2005: 220).

Snouck-Hurgronje ( 2007 ).

Triaud ( 1997 ).

Mbacke ( 2005 ).

Mbacké ( 2005 ) and ANN 4E12.12 Extraits du rapport du ministère des affaires étrangères sur le pèlerinage à la Mecque 1946. Bourguiba made the official pilgrimage by Junkers 52 airplane in 1946.

Pervillé ( 1997 ) and Weil (2003).

Mann & Lecocq ( 2007 ).

Cooper ( 1999 ). Until WWII the vast majority of pilgrims were men. At present, over 50% of pilgrims are women Unfortunately, I have no space in this article to elaborate on the very important gender dimensions to the changes in pilgrim demography and their meaning for individual pilgrims. This dimension requires an article of its own, which I hope to write in the future.

Bianchi ( 2004 ): appendix tables.

Amselle ( 1977 ); Hock (1999).

Gary-Tounkara ( 2003 ).

Baier ( 1980 ).

Grégoire ( 1986 ).

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    For 23 years Al Ehsan Travel has been committed to serving the guests of Allah. Since our start in 1991 and our direct affiliation with the Ministry of Hajj as a certified group, our number one priority has been to ensure the best Hajj and Umrah experience, while keeping the price as affordable as possible. For the year 2022, we are offering ...

  6. The economics of Hajj: Money and pilgrimage

    The millions who come to Mecca every year bring billions of dollars to the Saudi economy. Restaurants, travel agents, airlines and mobile phone companies all earn big bucks during the Hajj, and ...

  7. How tech is transforming Saudi's Hajj travel industry

    Hajj tourism predicted to be worth $350bn by 2032. Tech improving travel, safety and communications for pilgrims. Saudi Arabia's strong digital infrastructure means it is ready to receive "whatever number of pilgrims and Umrah performers", according to its director general of passports Sulaiman al-Yahya. Two million people are expected to ...

  8. Al Noor Travels

    Welcome to Al Noor Travels. Al Noor Travels Hajj and Umrah Service is a trusted travel agency specializing in organizing seamless and spiritually fulfilling journeys for Hajj and Umrah pilgrimages. With our experienced team and comprehensive services, we prioritize the comfort and convenience of our clients.

  9. Al-FALAH Tours & Travels

    At Al-FALAH Tours & Travels, we pride ourselves in providing excellent service and focusing only on one goal: your absolute comfort. We are recognized by the Government of India and the Government of Saudi Arabia for our commitment of delivering an exceptional experience for pilgrims who perform Hajj as well as Umrah with us.

  10. A new Hajj booking system leaves tour operators out in the cold

    On average, United Kingdom-based travel operators organise trips for about 20,000 - 25,000 pilgrims every year, but many of them were only informed of the dramatic changes at the same time as ...

  11. From caravans to markets, the hajj pilgrimage has always included a

    Muslim pilgrims pray on a rocky hill called the Mountain of Mercy near the holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia, in 2013. AP Photo/Amr Nabil. While the hajj has historically been linked to commerce ...

  12. Al Hoda Hajj Group: Travel Specialist in USA

    Al Hoda Hajj Group: Travel specialist in USA, offering seamless journeys of faith. Experience the ultimate pilgrimage with us. Book now! Skip to content ''36. th. 1-866-254-6321; Home; ... As you remember, Al-Hamdu Lillah, I made my 1st Hajj with my mother using your company in 2001. I want to thank you for the great service that you provided us.

  13. Al Hajj Travel Trade

    AL HAJJ TRAVEL TRADE. 20 Jumadal-Thanni 1445 H. Tuesday, January 2, 2024 4:33 AM. Opening Time: 9.30 am to 6.00 pm (Friday & Government Holiday Off)

  14. Al Yarmook

    Al Yarmook Hajj Umrah & Travel is a UAE Auqaf KSA Hajj mission and IATA approved tour operator. We Endeavour to provide an honest and quality Hajj Umrah and Travel service. Our Network is well established UAE wide agent network and offices in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah Al Ain and Musaffah. We are geared towards making this auspicious and ...

  15. The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah (Saudi Arabia)

    Description. The yearly Islamic pilgrimage (hajj) to the Holy city of Makkah is one of the five pillars of Islam and one of the most important and most ancient religious pilgrimages in the world.Until today, millions of Muslim pilgrims visit Makkah every year to accomplish this religious duty. For centuries, every year, Muslim pilgrims undertook long distance journeys by well-established ...

  16. Al HAJJ Travel TRADE

    Al HAJJ Travel TRADE. 22 likes. For The TRAVEL

  17. Best Hajj Services

    Al Firdous is more than a travel agency; we are your companions on your sacred journeys. With a deep commitment to providing unparalleled luxury and spiritual experiences, we are proud to be one of the few companies in Pakistan that offers authentic training and guidance for Hajj.Our journey began with the aspiration to offer a unique blend of comfort and devotion for pilgrims.

  18. PHOTOS: Hajj travel through the centuries

    1 of 7. The pace of movement in past centuries has been heavy on the Hajj routes, which were not only used for pilgrimage, but for communication, travel and trade. The most famous Hajj routes were ...

  19. Hajj

    hajj, in Islam, the pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in Saudi Arabia, which every adult Muslim must make at least once in his or her lifetime.The hajj is the fifth of the fundamental Muslim practices and institutions known as the Five Pillars of Islam.The pilgrimage rite begins on the 7th day of Dhū al-Ḥijjah (the last month of the Islamic year) and ends on the 12th day.

  20. Al Hajj Travel Trade

    Al Hajj Travel Trade. Alhajj Travel Trade (ATT) is a service oriented business Provide Hajj, Umrah, Air Ticketing, Visa Processing. We also support for Malaysia Professional Visa, MM2H (Malaysia My Second Home) visa. Contact Persons: A.K.M. Ashraful Alam ...

  21. PRESSR: Saudi Tourism Authority secures landmark new ...

    RIYADH: - Saudi tourism celebrated one of the most successful travel trade shows in its history at ITB Berlin this week celebrating Saudi's milestone achievement of welcoming over 100 million tourists in 2023 and securing major new trade partnerships as the sector continues its remarkable growth.Bu…

  22. The Hajj From West Africa From a Global Historical Perspective ...

    Abstract Over the last years, in average, 2,1 million people per year performed the hajj. These millions stand in contrast to the numbers visiting Mecca half a century ago. On average, until 1946 a rough 60,000 pilgrims visited Mecca annually, with at least half of these coming from the Arabian Peninsula. Today Saudi nationals make up about a quarter of all pilgrims. The explanations for the ...

  23. Asia Islamic Tourism & Trade Expo 2024 returns for its second ...

    This partnership underscores AITEX's commitment to fostering collaboration and driving positive growth within the Islamic tourism and trade sectors. AITEX 2024 extends a cordial invitation to national tourism offices, tourism boards, tourism players, and Umrah & Hajj operators to exhibit their products and services at the expo.

  24. Al-Hajj Travel and Tours

    Al-Hajj Travel and Tours, London, United Kingdom. 14,427 likes · 3 talking about this · 26 were here. Offering Hajj Umrah to Mekkah Medina and Islamic Tours to Jerusalem , Turkey , Morocco , Tunisia , S