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| The Ka'aba more than 120 years ago |
For nearly 14 centuries millions of people have trekked to Mecca, the birthplace of Islam, along what has become one of mankind's most travelled routes.
From princes to paupers, Muslims have travelled from the old world to the new, from East to West arriving at Mecca to observe the Hajj.
The pilgrimage has inspired written accounts since 1050 and forms the basis of Islamic travel writing.
The ceremonial essence of the Hajj remains intact but advances in transport and technology have shaped the changing course of the pilgrim's journey to Mecca only during the past 150 years.
Between the Islamic Middle Ages until the 19th century, pilgrims travelled by foot, camel, caravan and ship for months, years and even decades to fulfil a lifetime obligation. Short of money en-route, poorer pilgrims sometimes interrupted their journeys to earn more before continuing on their way.
Caravans set off from strategic points of the Islamic world - Cairo, Baghdad and Damascus - for Mecca, collecting pilgrims along the way who paid for food, provisions and board. Long convoys of camels with lightly jangling bells around their necks and fire lanterns smoothed their way across the desert terrain.
The road to Mecca was littered with peril and adventure. Thieves, tricksters, greedy border agents, enslavement, financial ruin, political upheaval, prejudice, disease and foul play were just some of the obstacles faced by pilgrims.
The threat of bandits, highwaymen and ruling local tribes was constant. One of the main income sources for Bedouin tribes was targeting defenceless pilgrims raiding their caravans when they couldn't pay. The journey to Mecca became as much a test of one's faith as the pilgrimage itself.
In one of the earliest Hajj travelogues, the Persian poet Naser-e Khosraw wrote in 1050...
By chance, the leader of the Arabs with whom we had travelled, the Banu Sawad, came to Jaz', and we took him as our khafir. His name was Abu Ghanem Abs son of al-Ba'ir, and we set out under his protection. A group of Arabs, thinking they had found 'prey' (as they call all strangers), came headed towards us; but since their leader was with us, they passed without saying anything. Had he not been with us, they most certainly would have destroyed us.
From the 15th century, with the onset of colonialism and European expansion of trade routes, Westerners began to arrive in Mecca as converts and more surreptitiously, in disguise. A fascination with the mysterious and oriental East led some Western travellers to infiltrate the sacred territory only accessible to bona-fide Muslims.
In 1853, British explorer Sir Richard Burton entered Mecca disguised as an Indian Pathan in an act celebrated in the British press.
(I was) curious to see with my eyes what others are content to hear with their ears, namely, Muslim inner-life in a really [sic] Islamic country, and longing, if truth be told, to set foot on that mysterious spot which no vacation tourist has yet described, measured, sketched and photographed.
From the Middle Ages to the 19th century, travel to the Hajj changed little. As the Islamic world grew from Morocco across India to China, so did the lengths the pilgrims travelled, caravans ranged from a single string of camels to mobile tented cities.
The advent of steamships and trains in the late 19th century rendered the old pilgrim routes obsolete.
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Modern Hajj travel
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The journey was shortened again with the arrival of the automobile and aeroplane in the 20th century, cutting a journey or years and months to a matter of weeks.
Modernity transformed the Hajj into a truly global experience, strengthening the sense of Muslim community as pilgrims come from the ends of the earth to pay tribute to Allah.
During the past eleven days here in the Muslim world, I have eaten from the same plate, drunk from the same glass, and slept in the same bed (or on the same rug) - while praying to the same God- with fellow Muslims, whose eyes were the bluest of blue, whose hair was blondest of blonde, and whose skin was the whitest of white. And in the words and in the actions and the deeds of the 'white' Muslims, I felt the same sincerity that I felt among the black African Muslims of Nigeria, Sudan, and Ghana. We were truly all the same (brothers). (Malcolm X Hajj 1964)
Aeroplanes have made the Hajj more accessible for the world's one billion Muslims in terms of cost and time away from families and employment but the driving force remains the same, in Allah's words...
Exhort all men to make the Pilgrimage. They will come to you on foot and on the backs of swift camels from every quarter; they will come to avail themselves of many a benefit... (Quaran, 22:22/29-30)
Find out more about the Modern Hajj.
Recommended reading
One Thousand Roads to Mecca - Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage Edited by Michael Wolfe
(Grove Press New York, 1997)
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History