Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to holy sites in and around Makkah, Saudi Arabia, will take place through Saturday.
After three years of sparse attendance because of the pandemic shutdown, about 2 million pilgrims from the world over have arrived in the country for the pilgrimage, which is obligatory once in a lifetime for every adult Muslim who is physically and financially able to fulfill the requirement.
“Hajj is a universal gathering of brotherhood and sisterhood in Islam,” said Abdulrahman Yaki, imam at the Islamic Center of the Capital District in Colonie.
One of the pilgrims this year is Naseem Khan of Schenectady. Her husband worked in Saudi Arabia 44 years ago, developing a city called Al Marid.
“There was a mosque across the street from our house. I used to see buses with pilgrims stop there and yearned to be among them someday,” she recalled. Khan and her husband had planned to go for hajj in 2016, which would have been in September of that year. Her husband had even submitted applications for their hajj visas, she said. But he took ill and died in February, several months before they were scheduled to go. Seven years later, she is going with her son Arif Khan of Rotterdam.
At sites in and around Mecca, the pilgrims, called hajis, carry out the rites and requirements of their religion in memory of Abraham, his wife Hagar and their son Ishmael.
The Quran tells of how Abraham took his wife and child to Hijaz, a mountainous, barren land, and left them near the hills in what is modern-day Mecca, now known as Makkah. When their provisions ran out and Ishmael cried, Hagar ran between the hills seven times seeking food and water. After an unsuccessful search, she returned to find a spring had miraculously appeared where her baby had been kicking the sand. The spring, Zamzam, continues to deliver water to this day. Abraham and Ishmael would later build the Kaaba in…
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