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Updated: June 4, 2025
It is a belief generally entertained in the East, and strengthened by many boasting hadjys on their return home, that all the pilgrims, on this day, encamp upon Mount Arafat; and that the mountain possesses the miraculous property of expansion, so as to admit an indefinite number of the faithful upon its summit.
Before mid-day, all the hadjys who had resided for some time at Mekka, likewise mounted their camels, and crowded the streets as they pressed forward to follow the Hadj. They were joined by the far greater part of the population of Mekka, who make it a rule to go every year to Arafat; and by a similar portion of the population of Djidda, who had been assembled here for some time.
At last, his son, Selym Ibn Soleyman, or Selim II., after many years labour, and at enormous expense, excavated a passage through the rocks behind Arafat, and formed a new conduit, which alone now subsists. He succeeded in bringing water very abundantly to the town, in A.H. 979. The whole length of the aqueduct is seven or eight hours.
All its baggage was left at Sheikh Mahmoud, excepting the tents that were to be pitched at Arafat. Most of the hadjys were mounted in the Shebrye, a sort of palankeen placed upon the camel. The camels' heads were decorated with feathers, tassels, and bells; but their heads, bent down towards the ground, showed how much they were fatigued by their journey.
During the whole morning, there were repeated discharges of the artillery which both Pashas had brought with them. A few pilgrims had taken up their quarters on Djebel Arafat itself, where some small cavern, or impending block of granite, afforded them shelter from the sun.
The steps and the summit are covered with handkerchiefs to receive their pious gifts, and each family of the Mekkawys or Bedouins of the tribe of Koreysh, in whose territory Arafat lies, has its particular spot assigned to it for this purpose. The summit commands a very extensive and singular prospect.
When morning dawned he made his way to Arafat, where he climbed the hill in the midst of the low-lying desolate ground.
The dogs burrowed in the shade of old walls; birds flew about with open beaks; the herbage wilted, and the leaves on the stunted shrubs ruffled, then rolled up, like drying cinnamon. If the denizens of the city found no comfort in their houses of stone and mud, what suffering was there for the multitude not yet fully settled in the blistering plain beyond the bluffs of Arafat?
From the Hill of Arafat; from Jannat el Ma'ale Cemetery; from the dun, bronzed, sun-baked city of a hundred thousand fanatic souls; from the Haram sanctuary itself where mobs of pilgrims were crowded round the Ka'aba and the holy Black Stone; from latticed balcony and courtyard, flat roof, mosque, and minaret, screams of rage shrilled up into the baked air, quivering under the intense sapphire of the desert sky.
From the summit of Arafat, I counted about three thousand tents dispersed over the plain, of which two thirds belonged to the two These assembled multitudes were for the greater number, like myself, without tents.
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