Mecca, Saudi Arabia: Muslim pilgrims gathered on Mount Arafat Arabia Saudi on Monday at the highest point of Hajj this year, held in a flowering form and under the restrictions on Koronavirus for the second year.
Only 60,000 people, all citizens or residents of Saudi Arabia, have been chosen to take part in the Hajj this year, with foreign pilgrims again forbidden.
Mask-Clad Faithful, who had spent the night in camps in the Mina Valley, gathered on Mount Arafat where the Prophet Muhamad was believed to deliver his last sermon, for the most important of the Hajj ritual.
After afternoon prayer, traditional worshipers raised a 70 meter high hill (230 feet) and the surrounding plains for hours of prayer and newspapers to atone for their sins, living there until night.
After sunset, they went to Muzdalifah, halfway between Arafat and Mina, where they would sleep under the stars before doing symbolic “devilism”.
This scene is dramatically different from the pilgrimage of the past, which has attracted up to 2.5 million people, and this year the mountain is free from a large crowd that goes down there in normal years.
Being one of the lucky ones “gives you the feeling that our God forgives and has chosen us to be in this place,” said Selma Mohamed Hegazi, an Egyptian aged 45 years.
“God willing, our prayers will be accepted.” My whole body shivered, “he told AFP when he stood among other emotional pilgrims, wore Ihram, traditional white clothes seamlessly worn during the Hajj.
The worshipers described the sense of tranquility.
Down on the mountain, also known as” Mount Rahmat “.” Being One of only 60,000 does the Hajj …
I feel like I am part of a (special) group that is able to reach this place, “I said.
Baref Siraj, a Saudi resident aged 58 years.
Hajj, one of five pillars Islam and a must for Muslims who are healthy in a way to travel at least once in their lifetime, are usually one of the biggest religions in the world of meetings.
Hosting Hajj is a Prestige Problem for the Saudi Ruler, for whom the custodianship of the most holy Islamic sites is the source Their strongest political legitimacy.
But the restrictions of pilgrims abroad have caused deep disappointment in fraudulent Muslims around the world, who usually save for years to take.
part.
Participants were elected from more than 558,000 applicants through online betrayal systems, with limited events in adults who were fully vaccinated aged 18-65 without chronic diseases.
Authorities tried to repeat last year’s success that occurred on the smallest scale in modern history with only 10,000 participants, but who did not see the virus outbreak.
The Saudi Health Authority said Sunday that no single Covid case was reported among pilgrims this year.
The kingdom has so far recorded more than 509,000 coronavirus infections, including more than 8,000 deaths.
About 20 million doses of vaccines have been given in more than 34 million countries.
Hajj, who usually packs a lot of people to a solid religious place, can be a super-spreader event for viruses.
But Saudi Arabia said it exerted the “highest level of health prevention measures” in the light of the pandemic and the emergence of a new variant.
Pilgrims are divided into several groups of only 20 to limit potential exposure, and “smart Hajj cards” have been introduced to allow contact-free access to camps, hotels and buses to ferry pilgrims around religious places.
The black-and-white robot has been deployed to remove the bottle of holy water from the spring of Zamzam at the Great Mosque of Mecca, built around the Kaaba, the black cubic structure to which Muslims throughout the world pray.
Ibrahim Siam, a 64-year-old Egyptian pilgrim from Dammam in the east of the country, said that the high-tech procedures introduced to manage Hajj “has made many things easier.”