Every year, millions of Muslims travel to Mecca to perform the Hajj, the major Islamic pilgrimage regarded as one of the five pillars of Islam. Far more than a religious gathering, the Hajj is a profound spiritual journey, a centuries-old historical legacy, a massive logistical undertaking, and a key geopolitical instrument for Saudi Arabia.

Over the centuries, the pilgrimage has shaped trade routes, cultural exchanges, and the development of the holy cities across the Arabian Peninsula. To this day, it remains a defining event in the Muslim world, at the crossroads of religious devotion, rapid modernization, and major economic stakes.

A tradition that predates Islam

The word “Hajj” comes from the Arabic root hajja, meaning “to set out for a place” or “to undertake a journey with a sacred purpose.” While the Muslim pilgrimage took its current form with the rise of Islam in the 7th century, historians note that Mecca was already an important spiritual and commercial center long before the advent of Islam.

In the pre-Islamic era, Arab tribes already gathered around the Kaaba, a cube-shaped sanctuary located at the heart of Mecca. At the time, the site housed numerous idols worshipped by tribes across the Arabian Peninsula. This pagan pilgrimage was also accompanied by trade fairs, temporary tribal truces, and major poetic gatherings.

According to Islamic tradition, the Kaaba was originally built by the Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) and his son Isma’il (Ishmael). With the advent of Islam, the Prophet Muhammad purified the sanctuary of idols after the conquest of Mecca in 630 CE, firmly redirecting the pilgrimage toward Islamic monotheism.

The Hajj then became a religious obligation for every Muslim who is physically and financially able to perform it at least once in their lifetime.

A universal spiritual journey

For Muslims, the Hajj represents one of the most significant moments in a person’s lifetime. The pilgrim enters a sacred state known as ihram, marked by simple clothing: two white cloths for men and modest attire for women. This shared dress code symbolizes the erasure of social, ethnic, and national distinctions before God.

The rituals of the Hajj take place mainly between Mecca, Mina, Arafat, and Muzdalifah, following a structured route that retraces key foundational episodes in Islamic tradition. The pilgrim begins with the tawaf, performing seven circumambulations around the Kaaba at the heart of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, symbolizing the unity of Muslims oriented toward a single spiritual center. This is followed by the sa’i, a seven-fold back-and-forth walk between the hills of Safa and Marwa, in remembrance of Hajar (Hagar), the wife of Ibrahim (Abraham), who desperately searched for water for her son Ishmael in the desert, before the spring of Zamzam miraculously emerged, according to tradition.

Pilgrims then travel to Mina, a vast tent city located a few kilometers from Mecca, before heading to Mount Arafat for the day of wuquf, the central moment of the Hajj and its spiritual peak. There, worshippers spend hours in prayer and reflection, asking for forgiveness, in a scene often likened to the Day of Judgment. After sunset, they proceed to Muzdalifah, where they spend the night under the open sky and collect pebbles for the symbolic stoning of the devil in Mina, a ritual commemorating Ibrahim’s refusal to yield to temptation. The pilgrimage concludes with the sacrificial rites of Eid al-Adha and a final tawaf around the Kaaba before the pilgrims depart.

Caravans that took months to cross

Before the modern era, reaching Mecca could take months, sometimes even a full year. Pilgrims traveled on foot, by camel, or in large caravans designed to protect them from bandits and the harsh conditions of the desert.

From Damascus, a route known as the Darb al-Hajj al-Shami led to Mecca, taking around forty days to reach the holy city. The Cairo route crossed the Sinai Peninsula and the Red Sea before entering the Hejaz over several weeks, passing through Aqaba and Yanbu. Pilgrims from the Maghreb often spent months on the road, traveling through cities such as Fes, Tlemcen, Tunis, and Tripoli before reaching Cairo. From Timbuktu or Senegal, some journeys took more than a year to complete.

Muslims from Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent also followed maritime routes across the Indian Ocean. Many never completed the journey, dying from disease, dehydration, or attacks by bandits along the way.

The Hajj thus helped shape vast transcontinental networks linking Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Caravanserais, markets, water stops, and entire towns flourished thanks to the flow of pilgrims.

Under the Ottoman Empire, securing the pilgrimage routes became a major political and religious priority. The famous Hejaz Railway, inaugurated in the early 20th century between Damascus and Medina, was built precisely to facilitate and speed up the pilgrimage.

A sweeping modernization under Saudi Arabia

Since the Saudi dynasty took control of the holy sites in the 1920s, the Kingdom has invested heavily in Hajj infrastructure. But under Mohammed bin Salman, this modernization has reached an entirely new scale.

The Crown Prince sees religious tourism as a strategic pillar of the “Vision 2030” plan, aimed at reducing Saudi Arabia’s dependence on hydrocarbons.

In recent years, tens of billions of dollars have been poured into the holy cities. Mega-hotels, shopping complexes, expansions of the Grand Mosque, air-conditioned prayer areas, and new airport terminals have transformed Mecca and Medina into sites of dramatic urban redevelopment.

In 2018, Saudi Arabia also launched a high-speed rail line linking Medina and Mecca in under two hours, at a cost of $16 billion.

The landscape of the holy cities has been profoundly reshaped. Where traditional neighbourhoods and historic homes once stood now rise luxury towers dominated by the towering Abraj Al-Bait complex (601 meters), one of the tallest buildings in the world.

A massive economic windfall

The Hajj and Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage that can be performed year-round, now represent a major economic sector for Saudi Arabia. The Hajj tourism industry alone exceeded $171 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $343 billion by 2034, with annual growth estimated at over 7%.

Every year, millions of Muslims attempt to secure a place for the Hajj, but country-specific quotas severely limit the number of pilgrims allowed. In some countries, applicants remain on waiting lists for years, sometimes more than a decade, before being able to go. For many believers, it is a once-in-a-lifetime journey. Some save for years, or even a lifetime, to afford it: between €4,000 and €8,000 for pilgrims from North Africa or the Middle East, and often over €10,000 for those coming from Europe or North America, depending on the package chosen.

The Mecca Chamber of Commerce estimates that 25–30% of private-sector revenues in the holy cities come directly from the two pilgrimages. After hydrocarbons, religious tourism has thus become one of the Kingdom’s key sources of income.

Entire industries revolve around the Hajj: aviation, hospitality, catering, transport, travel agencies, telecommunications, and retail. The contrast with past centuries is striking. Where the holy cities once depended mainly on caravan trade and pilgrims’ donations, the Hajj is now a fully globalized, multi-billion-dollar economy.

Control over the holy sites also gives Saudi Arabia enormous political weight in the Muslim world.

As custodian of Mecca and Medina, the Saudi monarchy draws much of its religious legitimacy from this role. Each year, the Kingdom must demonstrate its ability to host millions of worshippers under extremely complex security and health conditions. The Hajj is also a diplomatic tool: pilgrimage quotas allocated to Muslim countries can become instruments of political influence. Relations between Riyadh and states such as Iran have at times directly affected the organization of the pilgrimage.

Tragedies that have marked history

The history of the Hajj has also been marked by several catastrophes and traumatic events.

The most prominent episode in modern Hajj history remains the seizure of the Grand Mosque in Mecca in November 1979. On 20 November, the first day of the Islamic century 1400, a group of armed extremists led by Juhayman al-Otaybi took control of Islam’s holiest site. The attackers denounced the Saudi monarchy as corrupt and overly Westernised, and proclaimed the arrival of the “Mahdi,” a messianic figure in Islam, embodied, according to them, by Mohammed al-Qahtani, Juhayman’s brother-in-law. Most of the militants came from the Otaiba tribe, a highly conservative Bedouin group from southern Saudi Arabia. Thousands of pilgrims found themselves trapped inside the mosque complex for nearly two weeks.

Saudi forces, initially overwhelmed and constrained by the religious prohibition on fighting within the sanctuary, eventually launched a full-scale assault with the help of foreign advisers, including French specialists from the GIGN on the technical aspects of the operation. Fierce fighting in the mosque’s underground passages left hundreds dead among soldiers, insurgents, and civilians. The event deeply shocked Saudi society and marked a turning point: in the aftermath, the Kingdom adopted a more conservative social line throughout the 1980s to reinforce its religious legitimacy.

In 1987, another major tragedy struck the Hajj when clashes erupted between Iranian pilgrims and Saudi security forces. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Tehran had encouraged its pilgrims to stage political demonstrations against the United States and Israel during the pilgrimage, which Riyadh viewed as a politicisation of a sacred ritual. On 31 July 1987, a demonstration by Iranian pilgrims in Mecca escalated into violent clashes with Saudi forces and counter-protesters. The official death toll exceeded 400, mostly Iranians, leading to a temporary diplomatic rupture between Iran and Saudi Arabia and deepening long-standing regional tensions.

The Hajj has also been marked by numerous deadly crowd disasters. In 1990, a massive stampede in a tunnel near Mina killed more than 1,400 pilgrims. In 2015, another crush in Mina left over 2,000 dead according to several international estimates, making it one of the worst disasters in the pilgrimage’s modern history. The Covid-19 pandemic also marked a historic break: in 2020, Saudi Arabia drastically limited the Hajj to only a few thousand residents of the Kingdom, an unprecedented decision in the modern era.

Since then, Saudi authorities have significantly modernised Hajj management, investing in surveillance systems and artificial intelligence to better anticipate crowd movements, improve mobility across holy sites, and reduce the risk of stampedes in the most congested areas.

Yet one constant has remained for over fourteen centuries: for millions of believers, the journey to Mecca is above all a deeply personal spiritual quest, a return to the origins of Islamic faith, and the fulfilment of a lifetime.