Mohammedans Start Annual Trek to Mecca

Manawatu Times, Volume LIII, Issue 6631, 9 June 1928, Page 1 (Supplement)

Mohammedans Start Annual Trek to Mecca

250,000 Pilgrims to Meet at Holy Shrine

GREEN TURBANS FOR HAJJIS

Eighty thousand Mohammedan pilgrims have started the annual trek over the sands of Arabia to Mecca. In a month a quarter-million Moslems will be assembled from north and south, east and west, Bokhara and Zanzibar, Java and Morocco, for the culminating acts of the great ritual of the annual pilgrimage, the slaying of the sacrificial lambs at Arafat and the stoning of the devils at Mina.

And when all this has been accomplished a quarter-million Moslems, less those who succumb to the hardships of the journey, will return whence they came, qualified, in proud and pious memorial of their endurance and faith, to wear for ever the green turban of the full-blown Hajji.

The only thing lacking this year is the absence of the holy carpet, which is not making its usual yearly journey from Egypt to Mecca. The ceremony of the Mahmal with its military trappings, its band and its gayly caparisoned camels, is hallowed by time and custom, but music offends the Wahabi sect of the Moslems, which now dominate the holy places of Mohammed, and foreign military escorts insult their conceptions of national independence. Rather than cause renewed bickering between Egypt and the Hedjaz, the carpet has been left at home. For three months crowded pilgrim ships have arrived weekly at Jeddah. Jeddah harbour is reef-bound and disembarkation has to bo by sambuks. The majority of the pilgrims are already bareheaded and wearing the prescribed dress, two lengths of new seamless white calico worn haphazard as shawl and skirt.

Once ashore the different parties are quickly taken in charge by local guides who shepherd them in wideeyed, silent processions through the mazy streets to official lodging houses. Jeddah is the bn*‘’9 neck of the Haj, and the authorities do not encourage the pilgrims to tarry on their road to Mecca. By dawn the twincouched palanquins have been mustered in orderly rows in convenient squares near the lodging houses. As soon as it is light, camels in strings of four and five begin to arrive and the long process of loading begins. Four wiry camel men lightly swing a palanquin across the hump of a startled camel. He heaves and lurches to his feet, highly indignant and, to tlie two pilgrims whoso 40miie journey is to be made on bis back, a fearsome boast.

But up (hoy go, the ship of the

desert finds an even keel, and with the stealthy tread of pari on sand, the camels swing off to the outskirts of the town. At last the assembly is achieved. The mulowif mounts a sturdy white jackass, checks his charges and their baggage and the long procession moves off through the town, through the narrow Mecca Gate, and out at last on a wide sandy road, stretching away over yellow foothills to a jagged range of blue mountains, behind which, in a sun-baked ravine, lies Mecca itself.