The hajj – the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, which Muslims are expected to make once in their lives if they are able – is expected to begin June 26 and last for five days. In 2023, approximately 2 million pilgrims will participate, close to the annual numbers of pilgrims in years before the COVID-19 pandemic.
Their visits, like those in generations past, will be enhanced, and even made possible, by modern technology. In recent years, the Saudi government has developed smartphone apps aimed at organizations of pilgrim groups. Pilgrims use apps themselves, with guides to help them find and pray at specific holy locations. And they document their journey, both physical and spiritual, on social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. The country is rolling out smart cards for pilgrims to access hajj services and information, as well as make cashless payments.
And in 2022, the Saudi government established an online system by which prospective pilgrims from the U.S., Australia and Western Europe must enter a digital lottery for visas allowing them to make the hajj. As for Muslim-majority countries, one visa is allocated per 1,000 Muslims in each country. Those who are granted visas must book their travel through the Saudi government, rather than through travel agencies in their home countries.
As those changes have occurred, news coverage about the hajj has often mentioned the technology involved, describing it as a new phenomenon that is “transforming” the pilgrimage. Yet as a historian of the Middle East and an expert on contemporary Islam, I know that technology has been at the heart of the hajj since the mid-1800s. Transportation and communications technologies have long been fundamental to governments’ management of the pilgrimage and to pilgrims’ spiritual experiences.
Travel technology
As far back as the 1850s, steamship technology made it possible for many more Muslims to make the pilgrimage, even if they lived long distances from Mecca.
According to scholar Eric Schewe, “European shipping lines sought Hajj pilgrims as passengers to supplement” the money they made from shipping commercial cargo through the Suez Canal. By dropping off pilgrims at Arabian ports along a route their ships were already traveling, merchants were able to make a little extra income around the time of the hajj. And the pilgrims appreciated the safety, speed, reliability and lower cost of steamship travel. As a result, they could reach the hajj more quickly and more cheaply than at any earlier period in history. From the 1880s to the 1930s, the number of pilgrims going on hajj each year quadrupled.
While steamships helped those traveling by water, rail helped those coming by land – especially those from Russia, whose multi-leg journeys often included travel by train to Odessa, in today’s Ukraine, or another Black Sea port, where they crossed to Istanbul by steamship and then to Mecca via caravan.
Communications technology
The telegraph also played an important role in the hajj. The Ottoman government used its extensive telegraph network to govern and as a sign of independence from European powers; one key link was from the capital in Istanbul through Damascus, Syria, to Mecca. European consular officials, rail and steamship companies, and even individual pilgrims used the telegraph system for hajj-related communications.
Other communications technologies also affected the pilgrimage. Colonial powers with Muslim populations worried that the mass gathering of Muslims would lead to political unrest. They also worried about public health.
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