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MECCA: Mecca slowly woke up from a seven-month hibernation on Sunday when pilgrims arrived after Saudi Arabian authorities partially lifted the coronavirus ban on performing umrah, a pilgrimage to the two holiest places in Islam. performed at any time of the year.
Millions of Muslims from all over the world often descend on Saudi Arabia for Islamic umrah and haj pilgrimages. The two share common rites, but the haj, which takes place once a year, is the longest major ritual that is a unique duty in the life of Muslims.
Saudi Arabia, which held a largely symbolic haj earlier this year limited to domestic worshipers, has allowed citizens and residents to begin performing umrah starting Sunday at 30% capacity, or 6,000 pilgrims a day. It will open to Muslims from abroad from November 1.
Last year, the Gulf state attracted 19 million visitors to umrah.
“All of Mecca is happy today, it is like the end of a jail sentence. We have missed the spiritual sentiment of the pilgrims who roam the city, ”said Yasser al-Zahrani, who became a full-time Uber driver after losing his construction job during a three-month national shutdown imposed in March. .
“I pray we never go through the last few months again, it was a nightmare … there was hardly any work to cover my bills,” he told Reuters.
Before the pandemic, more than 1,300 hotels and hundreds of shops operated 24 hours a day to serve pilgrims visiting the holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
Now many are closed, the windows of some collect dust.
At midnight, dozens of registered pilgrims wearing face masks prepared to enter the Great Mosque in small groups.
As they surrounded the Kaaba, a stone structure that is the holiest in Islam and the direction Muslims head to pray, officials made sure to keep a safe distance from each other.
The faithful are no longer allowed to touch the Kaaba, which is wrapped in black cloth adorned with Arabic calligraphy in gold.
New reality
The pilgrimage is the backbone of a plan to expand tourism under the push of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to diversify the economy of the world’s leading oil exporter. His goal was to increase visitors to umrah to 15 million by 2020, a plan interrupted by the coronavirus, and to 30 million by 2030.
The religious pilgrimage generates US $ 12 billion in income from accommodation, transportation, gifts, food and fees for the faithful, according to official data.
Saudi Arabia hosted a drastically reduced haj in late July for the first time in modern history, with a few thousand domestic pilgrims instead of the usual sea of white of some 3 million Muslims.
Near the Grand Mosque, the hotels in the high-rise towers were almost empty and the shopping malls closed hours before the resumption of umrah. Dozens of stores and restaurants closed.
Economists have estimated that Mecca’s hotel sector may lose at least 40% of the revenue generated by the pilgrimage this year.
Five hotel workers, who declined to be identified, said they were granted unpaid leave during the shutdown and hundreds more in the hospitality industry were fired.
“It’s hard to think that this will be the new normal, I pray every day for the crown to end,” Zahrani said.
