The pilgrims of the House of God began arriving this morning, Thursday, the eighth of the month of Dhu al-Hijjah 1443 AH, to the area of ​​Mina, near Mecca, to spend the day of Tarwiyah, before they stopped tomorrow, Friday, at Arafat’s peak on the day of the largest pilgrimage, amid strict security and health measures in the first Hajj season after the Corona pandemic.

On the eighth day of Dhul-Hijjah, which is called “the Day of Tarwiyah,” the pilgrim takes a bath and enters ihraam (if he is tamattu’. As for the singular and the qarir, they remain in their first ihraam and do not break out of it), and he goes out to Mina and spends the night there and a lot of the Talbiyah, and he prays the five daily prayers, and he prays the four. There are only two units of prayer (Zuhr, Asr, and Isha).

The site of Mina is located between Makkah Al-Mukarramah and Muzdalifah, 7 kilometers north-east of the Grand Mosque. .

Mina is considered to have a historical and religious position, in which the Prophet of God Abraham, peace be upon him, threw the Jamarat, and the sacrifice of Ismail, peace be upon him, was slaughtered.

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Pilgrims flock to Mina to spend the day of Tarwiyah. https://t.co/M7ge6YlD2c# Was_am pic.twitter.com/vXbSH0IJct

— SPAregions (@SPAregions) July 7, 2022

ban policy

In a related context, Saudi Attorney General Saud Al-Mojeb said that Hajj is a religious duty and it is forbidden to raise sectarian and partisan slogans.

Al-Mojeb also stressed the inviolability of exploiting religious rites or holy places, and that it is one of the issues that the Public Prosecution Office calls for applying the most severe penalties against those convicted there.

The Saudi Public Prosecutor affirmed the criminal justice protection of the holy sites and their occupants from all forms of felony or assault.

Hajj after Corona

Rituals are performed this year amid strict security and health measures in the first Hajj season, two years after the spread of the Corona pandemic, and among the most prominent of these measures is the sterilization of the Grand Mosque 12 times a day.

And the Saudi authorities allowed one million Muslims who received vaccines against the Corona virus, including 850,000 who came from abroad, to perform the Hajj this year, after two years of significantly reducing the numbers due to the epidemic.

This year's Hajj, whose participants were chosen by lottery, is much larger than the previous two seasons in 2020 and 2021 but still smaller than normal times.

In 2019, about 2.5 million Muslims from all over the world participated in the annual Hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam and an obligation that Muslims who are able to perform at least once in their lives.

But then, the outbreak of the Corona virus forced the Saudi authorities to significantly reduce the number of pilgrims, as 60,000 citizens and residents in the Kingdom participated and were fully vaccinated in 2021, compared to a few thousand in 2020.

This year’s pilgrimage is limited to the age group less than 65 years, with the requirement to complete immunization with basic doses of Corona vaccines approved by the Saudi Ministry of Health.

The authorities required pilgrims from outside the Kingdom to submit a negative coronavirus test result for a sample taken within 72 hours before the departure date.

hygienic measures

The authorities established many health facilities and mobile clinics, and equipped ambulances to meet the needs of pilgrims, especially with the high temperatures.

Inside the Grand Mosque, ambulance teams are deployed in different locations, and dozens of volunteers line up in long queues while holding wheelchairs to help those who cannot walk long distances.

For his part, the Director of the General Administration of Environmental Protection and Epidemiology in Saudi Arabia, Hassan Al-Suwaihri, confirmed that the Grand Mosque is disinfected 12 times a day, noting that more than 70,000 liters of sterilizers are used to purify the mosque in order to serve the pilgrims.

Al-Suwaihri said in statements to the Saudi "Al-Ikhbariya" channel, on Tuesday evening, that the sterilization and disinfection teams are available 24 hours a day and consume more than 70,000 liters of sterilizers daily.