Saudi Arabia / Makkah - Pilgrimage

From Madinah al-Munawarrah

The itinerary of the day of departure from Madinah was to perform umrah,  otherwise known as mini pilgrimage or mini Hajj. The  steps of umrah consists of intention,  ihram,  Tawaf,  sai and end. Unlike Hajj,  umrah does not include some additional steps of Hajj such as staying a night in the valley of Mina, spending a night uttering supplications and repenting in the plains of Arafat, throwing pebbles at pillars at Jamratul Aqaba and sacrificing an animal,  all to be done during certain dates during the Islamic month of Zulhijjah. Before embarking from the hotel, I put on my ihram, essentially two long white pieces of cloth with one wrapped around my waist and the other slung around my neck,  both of which was kept in place by a non-stitched belt. A slipper revealing my toes completes the outfit. The outfit is reminiscent of what one might compare to as the Greek toga. Before wearing the ihram, I bathed with the intention of wearing my ihram and prayed a recommended prayer of ihram. (Solat Sunnat Ihram).

Outside Bir Ali (With ihram-clothed men)

Bir Ali, the start of pilgrimage

We took a bus to Bir Ali which was situated on the outskirts of Madinah and it took us less than an hour to arrive. Bir Ali is a mosque situated outside of Haram (Forbidden) land. Haram land is a large area in Saudi Arabia which encompass Makkah, Madinah and an area called Thaif. When a person in ihram starts their pilgrimage,  they start from outside the Haram land,  the Halal (permissible) land. From there,  they make their way to specific "gates" specified by the Prophet Muhammad (Peace be Upon him) which leads into Haram land. At these gates,  pilgrims are supposed to start their first step of their pilgrimage whereby failure to do so would render the pilgrimage unaccountable. Bir Ali is one such place specifically for people heading to Makkah in the direction of Madinah. The other places includes Juhfah, Wadi Aqeeq, Qarn al-Manazil,  Ji'rannah and Yalamlam among other places. Bir Ali is a large white pristine building with a beautiful open courtyard in the middle. Shops and walkways around the mosque sold merchandise for pilgrimage such as the ihram cloths, belts,  scissors and of course,  snacks for the long journey ahead. There,  we say our intention. "O Allah, I am making intention for umrah,  make it easy upon me and accept it from me." We then proceeded to say a clause, "And if my umrah was prevented from completion due to (menstruation, illness or weakness), I end my umrah without incurring dam." Dam means payments which have to be done if we do certain forbidden acts during our pilgrimage. The payment is sacrificing an animal, a sheep being the most common choice. There is a list of forbidden things a person cannot do once they have uttered their pilgrimage intentions and entered Haram land. We call it being in a state of ihram. In a state of ihram, a man cannot cover his head, wear anything but two white cloths, wear covered footwear which hides their toes, wear perfume, lose more than three pieces of hair, have sexual intercourse or marry. A woman must cover herself such that only her face and two hands are exposed,  must not wear perfume, lose more than 3 pieces of hair, have sexual intercourse or marry. Doing any of this would incur a Dam whereby failure to pay the Dam would make your pilgrimage unaccountable.

After our intention, we took a seven hour bus ride South to Makkah about 450 kilometers away from Madinah. As the bus roared through the desert highway, I was enraptured by the Arabian landscape. There are mountains made of rocks the size of boulders littering the landscape which turned a brilliant reddish purple amid the setting sun. Contrary to popular beliefs, the desert of Saudi Arabia are not made of mostly sand,  but rather of rocks. And as I was enraptured by the rocky desert,  I could only imagine our dear Prophet as he made his way on camelback from Makkah to Madinah during the Hijrah,  a historic moment which eventually marked the start of the Islamic calendar year. Amid the roar of the engine, our tour group chanted the Talbiyyah. The Talbiyyah; whose meaning touches the heart and causes a pilgrim to be washed in a wave of emotions. Just imagine. This is the English translation of the Talbiyyah: "Here I am,  God! Here I am! You have no partners,  here I am! Verily all praise and blessings are yours,  and all sovereignty. You have no partners!." The journey towards Makkah can be pictorially imagined as us moving towards God's embrace, sacrificing all that we have left behind to undertake that journey. All in the name for God. Thus I called out to God,  with silent tears streaming down my face in the darkness of the bus, "Here I am,  O God! (Embrace me, O God!) Here I am!" Labbaikallah Hummalabaik! It was a truly beautiful moment.

The Clock Tower in Mecca as seen from Masjidil Haram

Makkah

At around 11pm, Saudi Arabia time, we arrived in Makkah. Our hotel, Swissotel, is located in the premise of the enormous iconic clock tower next to Masjidil Haram. It would only take five minutes for me to get from the hotel to inside the Masjidil Haram. Inside the Masjidil Haram is the Kaabah. The Kaabah is the epicentre of the Muslim World. Everyday when we pray, we face this black cube; a structure said to be first built by the first human, Adam, and subsequently after the apocalyptic floods during Noah's time when the Kaabah fell in ruin, was rebuilt by Abraham. Around this Kaabah now, Muslims make their tawaf. It is said that Makkah never sleeps. Hundreds of Muslims would circle around this black cube every single moment and that was the situation we encountered when we wanted to make tawaf at 12am that day.


Kaabah,from a distance

Masjidil Haram is a constantly changing landscape. It is a mosque, and a direct translation of Masjidil Haram means Forbidden Mosque or Mosque in the Forbidden Land. The centre of the Mosque is the Kaabah, a massive cube structure made from rocks and covered in a black cloth with some gold linings on it. The floor is made entirely of marble, again a great material for the hot scorching sun of summer.  There are currently three levels at which a person can circle around the Kaabah. The first is the main ground level meant for ordinary healthy Muslims to circle the Kaabah, and the other two at level 2 and 3 are meant for those in wheelchairs as they would obstruct the flow of movement if they were to do tawaf together with the other Muslims. Around the Kaabah, away from the circling mass of Muslims are places to pray. Carpets similar to those in The Prophet's Mosque are placed for the ease of visitors to pray or to do dhikr. (Acts which instils a constant remembrance for God and his blessings) Volumes of the Quran are placed near every praying spots so that one can easily retrieve a Qur'an to read. There is a place in Masjidil Haram meant for Sai, an obligatory step of pilgrimage. In this place, there are two small hills, Safa and Marwah. The slopes from Safa to Marwah have all been laid in marble too. One can do sai on three different levels. More about the place would be explained later on. In the Mosque, there is also a Library. I never got round to visiting the library but the one time I walked past the library in the morning after Fajr (dawn) prayers, there were a few people waiting outside with printed papers all in Arabic in their hands. The Masjidil Haram is said to be constantly being renovated. The three levels for tawaf was a recent construction. Even now, as I entered the Mosque, construction workers were busy working on the Mosque. They were hammering, drilling and cementing all over the Mosque in large construction sites. As a result, navigating through the Mosque was difficult. I got lost twice during my stay there and required more than an hour to find my way back to the hotel. There was only one exit gate to leave and reach our hotel, King Fahd's Gate, and construction sites block certain paths such that you have to circle around the Kaabah in order to find your way to the Gate from one point. The crane incident which killed 109 Muslims a while back was also part of the construction efforts to upgrade the Mosque while accommodating the daily high volume of traffic through the Mosque. Around the Masjidil Haram, there are massive hotels of world renowned brands such as Movenpick and Swissotel and finding food is never a problem. KFC and Burger King are among the famous fast food chains available there. There are restaurants and cafes even though most hotels would have served food for breakfast, lunch and dinner already. An interesting thing to notice is the segregation between men and women to buy food. There are separate lines to order your food manned by men and women to cater to the different genders. Even while praying in the Mosque, men and women are always kept apart and the security personnel would usher men to male praying spots and likewise for the females. Some families who wanted to pray together as a family were separated as a result. Thus, that was how the order was kept in Saudi Arabia.

Tawaf

Umrah/ Mini-pilgrimage

Our next step of umrah is tawaf which consists of the intention to tawaf and the action of circling the black cube seven times during which a person can make supplications (doa), and mutter certain recommended prayers which the Prophet had done hundreds of years ago. We started from the Hajar Aswad, a black stone said in Islam to be a stone sent from Heaven to Adam and Eve to the spot of the Kaabah so that they knew where to build an altar to pray to God. The stone was said to originally be pure dazzling white but it became black after absorbing the sins of mankind who had touched it. Five years before Prophet Muhammad's ascension to Prophethood, he gave the solution of who would place the stone at its place after the representatives present argued about who would get the honour of placing the rock at its place. The Prophet then suggested placing the rock on a piece of cloth to be held by all the representatives and carried to its place on the Kaabah. And after that, Prophet Muhammad was given the honour of placing it on its permanent spot.

After circling the Kaabah seven times, we made our way to a praying spot away from the circling mass, to a place as close as possible to the Maqam Ibrahim. Maqam Ibrahim is a spot said to be where Abraham had stood when he was building the Kaabah. Although there are obviously many spots where Abraham would have stood at when building the Kaabah, the Maqam Ibrahim is used now as a guiding spot to make recommended prayers after our tawaf. Maqam Ibrahim is a golden enclosure where a stone plaque with a pair of footprint engraved on it lies inside. It is not certain if the footprint belonged to Abraham himself. At our spot, we made supplications while facing the Kaabah before performing a recommended (Sunnat) prayer. After praying, we drank Zamzam water easily found near the entrance to Safa Hill near the Maqam Ibrahim. Zamzam water are found in orange plastic tanks which are topped up regularly by workers in the Masjidil Haram. The water itself originates from an enormous water source below Makkah which had provided water for Makkans and Muslims who visited Makkah, for centuries. The story of how the water was founded is linked to our next step of umrah. Abraham had one day left his second wife, Hajar, and his son, Ishmael, in the desert while acting on God's instruction. When the pair ran out of water, Hajar ran seven times from the Safa Hill to Marwah Hill in search for water. At the end of her run, the crying baby, Ishmael, stamped his foot onto the ground, causing it to dent. Water started to gush out of the ground where his foot had landed and the water is Zamzam. The amount of water that gushed out was so much that that pretty soon, Arab travellers found Hajar and her son with the new large water source and some eventually settled in the area. Years later, the early Makkan community is formed. Unlike ordinary water where a Muslim is encouraged to sit and drink, Zamzam is best consumed while standing and facing the Kaabah. The constituents of Zamzam is essentially plain water but there are many proven nutritional values to it as compared to simple plain water.

Sa'i (Pronounced Sa Ngee)

After quenching our thirst, we made a short trip to Safa to start our Sai. Sai is the fourth step of Umrah. Muslims would walk from Safa to Marwah and back again seven times just as how Hajar had done thousands of years ago. Along the way, a person could recite prayers or follow what the Prophet had said during the time when he had done Sai. The trek from Safa to Marwah are now furnished with marble flooring and in some places even have air conditioning. Even the rocks on Marwah had been polished and glued over, possibly to prevent pilgrims from cutting themselves on the jagged rocks. Along both routes there is a zone lighted by green lights. When walking in either direction, men are encouraged to lightly jog once they reach the green lighted zones while chanting a specific supplication. The distance from one hill to the other is about 450 metres. There are four levels where one can do Sai, each level with a clearly defined starting and ending point, to cater to times when there are a large crowd doing Sai.

Marwah Hill for Tertib

After Sai, we reach the last step of umrah, Tertib (Conclusion). We stood on Marwah Hill, with an accompanying ustad (a man versed in religious knowledge) leading a mass supplication session. Afterwards, we snip a little bit of our hair three times, even for the women, which would indicate the end of our umrah. For men, it is more recommended that they shave their heads bald after umrah, which most people in our tour group did. The men in my family only did so after our third umrah. That night, we retreated to our respective hotel rooms at 2am.