Pilgrimages are undertaken by religions of all stripes but few are as epic as the Haj. An annual five-day affair, participants travel from around the world to a desert valley to perform ancient rituals that cannot be done in any other place at any other time of the year. For many of them, it will be the peak experience of their life.

With more than a million pilgrims undertaking the 60-kilometre journey by foot, it is a challenge for organisers to prevent crushes such as the 2015 stampede in which hundreds were killed. For this reason, even residents of Mecca, which is the epicentre of the Haj, now need permits to attend.

Saudi authorities have so far stopped nearly 270,000 people without permits from entering the city this past week, and have fined 23,000 Saudi residents for breaking Haj rules as well as revoking the licences of 400 Haj companies.

“The pilgrim is in our sight,” a Saudi official told a press conference, “and anyone who disobeys is in our hands.”

Meanwhile, the kingdom is pulling out all stops to offset the kind of scorching conditions that saw 1300 pilgrims die in 2024. The temperature hit 52 degrees Celsius then; this year, temperatures start at 40 degrees and are set to increase during the week. Cooling measures include heat-resistant floor tiles, escalators and tunnels and air-conditioning in mosques. Hospital bed capacity is up, including clinics specialising in sunstroke and heat exhaustion, says the Saudi Ministry of Haj (yes, the Haj has its own government ministry). The Saudi government says it gave medical treatment to 141,000 unauthorised pilgrims last year.

Clearly, the Haj is no walk in the park –for participants or their hosts. So why go there? What’s it all about? And how optional is it for a Muslim?

What is the Haj?

The Haj is a pilgrimage (which is also the meaning of the word in Arabic) that is supposed to be undertaken by every able-bodied Muslim who has the means once in their lifetime. It’s held annually during Dhu al-Hijja, the last month of the Islamic calendar, this year falling on June 4-9.

“This is the highlight of one’s life,” says Islamic Council of Victoria president Adel Salman, who has travelled to Mecca to perform the Haj. “It’s exhausting, it’s expensive [but] you’re there just to, effectively, worship your Lord in the holiest place, for Muslims, on Earth.”

Not only is the Haj about connecting to God, he says, but also to past prophets: the pilgrimage re-enacts the journey of the prophet Muhammad in 632AD who was, in turn, retracing the journey of the patriarch Ibrahim (Abraham) into the desert with his wife Hajar (Hagar) and son Ismail (Ishmael), including their wanderings between the two hills of Safah and Marwah, searching for water. With many people travelling from overseas, the Haj also connects Muslims to the global community of Islam.

It is believed that undertaking the Haj will cleanse the believer of their sins and return them to a state of grace. “It has elements of being born again,” says Salman, “of renewing yourself spiritually.”

The pilgrims adopt a form of ritual purification and dress known as ihram, which for men involves wearing two pieces of white fabric with no seams or needlework and for women involves a white robe that covers the body, apart from the face and hands. Wearing scent or makeup is forbidden and there is no gender segregation during the pilgrimage. The aim is to eliminate distinctions in social status and gender, prefiguring the Day of Judgement.

The Haj is also a chance for Muslims to wipe the slate clean with others in their community. Before setting off, pilgrims seek the forgiveness of those who might be harbouring grievances against them and offer to pray for them in Mecca.

‘After coming back, I was a lot more conscious, more patient, more focused .. I found myself wanting to move beyond superficialities and connect.’

On their return, pilgrims will often be referred to by the honorific Haj or Haji and men sometimes dye their beards red to indicate that status. “I came back different,” says Salman. “You eventually get back to life and it overtakes you [but] for a period of time after coming back, I was a lot more conscious, more patient, more focused. Not that I’m a superficial person but I found myself wanting to move beyond superficialities and connect.”

Why Mecca? The city is where the prophet Muhammad was born and raised, and the place from which he was forced to flee when he began revealing God’s word (around the year 610, when he was about 40) and to which he and his followers – the nascent Muslim community – returned in triumph before his death in 632. Mecca and Medina, which is 340 kilometres to the north, have been holy sites in Islam for 14 centuries; the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was founded in 1932.

For nearly 400 years prior to World War I, the territory of Hejaz was part of the Ottoman Empire, with custodianship of the holy cities in the hands of the Hashemites, an Arab dynasty that traced its lineage to the prophet Muhammad. As the empire crumbled, the Hashemites allied themselves with the British and declared an independent kingdom with Mecca as its capital. However, in 1925 Hejaz was conquered by another dynasty from eastern Arabia – the Sauds. The Saudi kings have since styled themselves Khadim al-Haramain – custodian (or servant) of the two sacred places. The current king and custodian is Salman bin Abdulaziz, though the country’s de facto leader is his son, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, or MBS.

How many people do the Haj?

With easier air travel and a growing Muslim population, the number of people making the Haj has hovered around 2 million, hitting a peak of more than 3 million in 2012 and a low of 1.86 million in 2016, the year after a catastrophic crush on the route killed more than 2000 people. By May 2 this year, 1.4 million pilgrims had arrived in Mecca, authorities said.

All Muslims, provided they can obtain a visa from the Saudi authorities, are eligible to attend. Children will usually not be given a visa unless accompanied by their parents and women are unlikely to be given a visa unless accompanied by a male spouse or guardian. Those who perform the Haj as children are generally expected to perform it again as adults, when they have the power of individual consent.

But, given that a quarter of the world’s population is Muslim, there’s not room for everyone in this small patch of desert. In 2018, The New York Times calculated that if all the world’s Muslims wished to undertake the Haj, it would take them 581 years.

So the Saudi government allocates each of the world’s nations a quota for the year’s pilgrimage, with pilgrims booking their travel and accommodation – from first-class (five-star hotels) through to more basic – through accredited agents. Pilgrims arriving in Mecca must surrender their passports to Saudi authorities in return for a Haj ID, which they return to redeem their passport.

Nations typically are allowed 1 pilgrim per 1000 Muslims in their population, though Saudi Arabian citizens can apply once every five years. In Indonesia – the nation with the world’s largest Muslim population, which was allocated 221,000 places this year – millions of people are on provincial waiting lists for as long as 17 years. Other big quotas are for India (175,025) and Pakistan (179,210). Australia is home to about 800,000 Muslims.

The ministry of Haj aims to have a total 30 million pilgrims travel to Saudi Arabia for the Haj and the less arduous pilgrimage of Umrah (some pilgrims register for both; or some who can’t make it for the Haj will instead do the Umrah pilgrimage).

The main logistical challenge of hosting the Haj is that all pilgrims must perform the ritual in just a few days; it is not possible to stagger the huge numbers of people involved. This means enormous demand on facilities such as toilets and – given the advanced age of many pilgrims – medical services. The Great Mosque itself is built to accommodate 1.2 million people in prayer at once.

‘… more than 300 escalators help streamline pilgrims and specially constructed elevators can hold an ambulance ...’

These days Muslims can use technology to help them navigate Haj rituals: the Nusuk app is now the most important for Haj travel but the Asefny app is still in use for pilgrims experiencing medical emergencies. After the 2015 disaster, electronic ID bracelets connected to GPS were also introduced. Saudi Arabia’s standalone ministry for Haj affairs provides a special three-digit number for emergency calls that puts pilgrims through to one of several control centres. On the Jamarat bridge, there are more than 300 escalators to help streamline pilgrims and specially constructed elevators that can hold an ambulance take emergency patients to helipads at roof level. To deal with language barriers, medical teams are supplied with special picture books that help patients communicate the character of their illness or injury.

The halls where pilgrims stone a wall representing the Devil on the bridge were once circular, but studies revealed this to be a major cause of crowd flow problems and crushing, and so the halls are now ellipse-shaped.

Where do pilgrims walk on the Haj?

There are six key stages. In the Great Mosque, pilgrims walk en masse around the Kaaba – or Cube, pictured below, which Muslims believe to be the first mosque – to emphasise the unity of the believers, a ritual called tawaf. It’s this granite building, about 13 metres high, that Muslims worldwide turn to in prayer five times a day – they believe the Kaaba was built as a place of worship by Ibrahim and Ismail on God’s instructions.

For Adel Salman, who was 35 when he undertook the Haj, the most powerful moment was seeing the Kaaba for the first time. “I actually started crying. I was like a little kid. I was just overwhelmed that I was here in the holiest place on Earth and I was here in the house of God.”

‘The exterior is draped in a black silk curtain … embroidered with 15 kilograms of gold thread.’

Inside, the Kaaba is marble-clad with three pillars, a small altar and a black stone set in the eastern corner, which has been variously identified as a slab of ancient agate or a fragment of a meteorite. The exterior is draped in a black silk curtain called the Kiswa, that costs several million dollars to make – it’s embroidered with 15 kilograms of gold thread. It’s replaced each year during the Haj, with the old Kiswa being cut up and offered to Muslims as sacred gifts. In 1983, the United Nations in New York was given part of a Kiswa to exhibit.

The second stage is when the pilgrims walk between the “hills” of Marwa and Safa, huge mounds of rock that the mosque building has been extended to cover. They do this seven times, to symbolise the search for water of Ismail and his mother, Hajar. As a memento, many pilgrims take water from the well of Zamzam, which sprang up to quench the pair’s thirst.

After a night in a vast “encampment” of tent-like buildings at Mina, stage three sees the pilgrims walk to the top of the hill known as Mount Arafat for prayer and contemplation from noon to dusk. The prophet Muhammad delivered his final sermons here. In stage four the pilgrims walk down the hill to Muzdalifa to spend the night in prayer, and collect pebbles which they will later throw at a representation of the Devil, who is said to have tormented Ibrahim in the desert.

From Muzdalifa they move on to the fifth stage, walking across the Jamarat bridge to “stone” three walls that represent the Devil before doing a U-turn back towards Mina. In the past, this has been a major chokepoint for crowds but the bridge now has four storeys and more than 300 escalators. The pilgrims return to the Great Mosque and walk around the Kaaba again.

Finally, they change out of their ritual white robes into festive clothes and sacrifice sheep, re-enacting the sacrifice Ibrahim made instead of his son, to mark the beginning of the celebrations of Eid al-Adha. They can stay in Mina for two or three nights.

What if you are old, infirm or just don’t like crowds?

The Haj is not meant to be undertaken by those who are physically infirm – it is an arduous route – but that does not stop many Muslims approaching the end of their lives attempting it. As Salman points out, even though younger Muslims are encouraged to undertake the Haj, it takes some aspiring pilgrims a lifetime to save the money for the trip – and going late in life means you can be absolved of a lifetime's sins.

What about sending a proxy? After all, it is often asked whether it is permissible to fund someone else to perform the Haj on your behalf or on behalf of a relative who has died without making the pilgrimage. Although there are differing positions depending on Islamic schools of thought, it is generally considered that while paying for another to perform Haj is a worthy act, it cannot be a substitute for meeting one’s own spiritual obligation. If you are mature, sane and physically capable, then failure to perform the Haj is considered a neglect of religious duty.

While Adel Salman agrees that Haj conditions – the crowds, the heat, the stress – are a recipe for friction and conflict, he says pilgrims tend to keep it together. “Everyone was quite stressed and tired. A couple of times I had to hold myself because I was hoping people would move quicker [but] I bit my tongue,” he says. After all, everyone is savouring a rare opportunity, he adds. “You don’t want to throw it away.”

This Explainer was first published in 2019 and has since been updated.

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