Page 167 - UAE Truncal States_Neat

Chapter Four

bin Khallfah’s rule a group of some twelve lo fifteen people from Abu
Dhabi went together by boat to Haifa and from there to Jerusalem and
on lo the Holy City of Mecca; this pilgrimage is well remembered by
the community to this day. After the Second World War an ever
increasing number of pilgrims found a seat in one of the desert taxis
and buses which private tour companies were operating from the
main centres such as Baghdad, Riyadh and Damascus. But to travel
even as far as these cities from the Trucial Coast was no easy task,
particularly for the women.
Few people from the Trucial Stales ever set out to cross Arabia
alone or in small groups; they preferred the security and companion­
ship of an organised pilgrim caravan. The only people who could
have undertaken the journey alone were some of the beduin who
were sufficiently familiar with theRub' al Khali and the other deserts
of Arabia. The pilgrims from among the settled population of the
coastal towns and villages of the Trucial Coast were familiar with the
climatic and geographical conditions of the entire Peninsula, if only
through listening to poetry and the accounts of beduin; therefore
they did not set out without adequate preparation and they kept to
the commonly travelled routes.
On the other hand, for centuries the Trucial States have seen
faithful Muslims from further east land on their shores and in their
ignorance of the geography attempt lo reach Mecca on foot; these
people were usually ill-prepared, carrying only a little water, few
provisions and a little bundle of their seamless clothes for the
festivities in the Holy City. It was usually impossible to deter the
pious pilgrim, to turn him back, or to suggest he took another route
on account of his being so ill-equipped for the lonely journey along
sparsely populated coasts and through the empty deserts. Pilgrims
believed that if they failed to reach Mecca, it was at least meritorious
to die on the way.
It was in the nature of the pilgrimage that usually the older people
would undertake it because they could see that their time in which to
obey the Holy command was running out. On their return from the
pilgrimage the entire family and all the neighbours would rejoice,
celebrate and listen avidly to the hajji's often-repeated accounts of the
festivities in the Holy City, and the hazards of the journey, and the
people he encountered.
But neither the performance of the pilgrimage nor any other deed
which was of religious merit made a person so honoured as to accord

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