The pilgrims are swathed in the ihram, two seamless white pieces of cloth — one worn as a sarong from the navel down and the other draped over the left shoulder, leaving the right bare. With no jewelry, no perfume and no adornments, the bare-headed pilgrims stand as equals — the rich and the poor, the ruler and the ruled — regardless of color, ethnicity, nationality or any other attribute that might have defined their station in the worldly domain, which they have temporarily renounced to surrender themselves to God.

The women, so often shunned aside elsewhere, walk here as equals.

More than the dress, the ihram refers to the state of sanctity the pilgrims have entered: celibacy and non-violence — no hunting, no killing (not even hurting a pesky insect) and no aggressive behavior, such as losing temper. It is in this state of tranquility that they take up the devotional chant, the talbiyah, that echoes everywhere over the next few days:

Here I am, O Lord / Here I am at Thy service / Thou hath no partner / Here I am.

As they head toward the Great Mosque — the Haram al-Sharif (noble sanctuary), the locale of the Ka’ba — they are bursting with anticipation.

The Shrine of Shrines

As the pilgrims surge through one of the four main gates of the Great Mosque, they have their first breathtaking glimpse of the Ka’ba, squat in the center of a large open circular courtyard surrounded by the world’s only circular mosque. The not-so-cubic object of their lifelong veneration and imagination is 15 by 10 meters (50 by 33 feet) at its base and 14 meters (45 feet) high, with a flat roof. It is hollow. The outside is draped in a black silk cloth with Qur’anic inscriptions hand-embroidered and embossed in golden and silver threads that shimmer in the sunshine and the permanently floodlit night.

The pilgrims, stunned into momentary silence, burst forth with the ecstatic cry of Allah-o-Akbar:

Allah is the greatest / There is no god but Allah / O Allah Glorify and enhance the majesty of this House, / and the reverence and piety it evokes from mankind.

They rush to the east corner of the Ka’ba where a sacred black stone, a relic from the original structure, is set in a crevice. Every pilgrim wants to touch it, preferably kiss it, but rarely manages to, given the surging, jostling crowds. Gesturing a kiss, the pilgrims pronounce yet another supplication, and begin the most sacred rite, the tawaf, the counter-clockwise circling of the Ka’ba, reciting different prayers at different spots during different circuits. They run and walk. The old and the infirm, carried around in palanquins, raise their hands in supplication. The moving rings of humanity stop only for two purposes: when it is time for one of the five salahs or when a coffin has been brought for the rare honor of its funeral prayers being offered at the holiest of the holy grounds.