MECCA, Sept 12 (Reuters) – Saudi businesses catering to haj visitor have taken a hit this year as far fewer pilgrims arrive and those who come have less cash to spend.
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Saudi Arabia has said that 1.855 million pilgrims, majority from outside Saudi Arabia, have arrived for the annual pilgrimage, a religious duty for every able-bodied Muslim who can afford the journey.
This year’s Hajj started in Saudi Arabia on Saturday in absence of Iranian pilgrims due to a row between both countries on pilgrimage regulations. Overall, haj-related business was down by half, he said.
According to the procedure of the largest religious procession in the world, in the second of the five days, the pilgrims must perform a contemplative vigil on the mountain where the Koran states that the Prophet Muhammad delivered his last sermon, they leave in the evening.
That is less than previous years, when up to 3 million pilgrims attended.
“I have prayed to God to have mercy on us, give us relief and resolve Syria’s crisis”, said Um Fadi, wearing a traditional long black embroidered dress and head scarf native to her home in southern Syria.
The day spent on Mount Arafat is the pinnacle of the five-day hajj pilgrimage, which all able-bodied Muslims are required to perform at least once.
Almost two million pilgrims in white seamless dress gathered on the plains of Arafat and Jabal Al-Rahmah (Mount of Mercy) in piety and supplication where the differences in colors and races have been vanished.
In previous years, jostling to perform the stoning before returning to pray at the Grand Mosque accounted for numerous frequent stampedes and crushes that had afflicted haj.
During that ritual in Mina previous year, on September 24, a stampede killed roughly 2,300 people who were on their way to throw their stones at the Jamarat Bridge. “Saudi Arabia, which manages the hajj, investigated how that could have happened, but it’s not released results, which has infuriated Iran, which lost hundreds of citizens”. “I feel happy to be conducting the haj rituals”, he added.
On Sunday, helicopters monitored the crowd flow from the skies, while on the ground, police directed pedestrians and made sure there were no bottlenecks.
Saudi Arabia has taken strict security measures to protect the holy sites. Many Muslims who did not travel to Saudi Arabia for the hajj still fasted from dawn to dusk Sunday for similar reasons.
Barred from Mecca amid an escalating spat between Tehran and Saudi Arabia, masses of Iranian Shiite faithful have converged on the holy city of Karbala for an alternative pilgrimage.
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Adel al-Toraifi, the Saudi minister of culture and information, told Saudi media that the channel is also being broadcast by radio to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as via mobile phone applications and the Internet.
