18. The pilgrimage to Mecca.
The Hajj or pilgrimage to Mecca is incumbent on all men and women who have sufficient means to meet the expenses of the journey and to maintain their families at home during their absence. Only a very small proportion of Indian Muhammadans, however, now undertake it. Mecca is the capital of Arabia and about seventy miles from the Red Sea. The pilgrimage must be performed during the month Zu’l Hijjah, so that the pilgrim may be at Mecca on the festival of Id-ul-Zoha or the Bakr-Id. At the last stage near Mecca the pilgrims assume a special dress, consisting of two seamless wrappers, one round the waist and the other over the shoulders. Sandals of wood may also be worn. Formerly the pilgrim would take with him a little compass in which the needle in the shape of a dove pointed continually towards Mecca in the west. On arrival at Mecca he performs the legal ablutions, proceeds to the sacred mosque, kisses the black stone, and encompasses the Kaaba seven times. The Kaaba or ‘Cube’ is a large stone building and the black stone is let into one of its walls. He drinks the water of the sacred well Zem-Zem from which Hagar and Ishmael obtained water when they were dying of thirst in the wilderness, and goes through various other rites up to the day of Id-ul-Zoha, when he performs the sacrifice or kurbān, offering a ram or he-goat for every member of his family, or for every seven persons a female camel or cow. The flesh is distributed in the same manner as that of the ordinary Bakr-Id sacrifice.[22] He then gets himself shaved and his nails pared, which he has not done since he assumed the pilgrim’s garb, and buries the cuttings and parings at the place of the sacrifice. The pilgrimage is concluded after another circuit of the Kaaba, but before his departure the pilgrim should visit the tomb of Muhammad at Medina. One who has performed the pilgrimage to Mecca thereafter has the title of Hāji.