About three million faithful performed Haj here on Tuesday. They converged at Mount Arafat for Waqoof, which is the main ritual of the pilgrimage and spent the day praying and asking Allah Almighty's forgiveness. The pilgrims also listened to the Hajj Khutba, delivered by the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia Abdul Aziz at Masjid-e-Namira in Maidan-e-Arafat.
At Masjid-e-Namira they combined their Zohr and Asr prayers. After sunset, the faithful left Arafat for Muzdalifa where they combined their Maghrib and Isha prayers. They have to spend the night there under the open sky.
Among this year's pilgrims is Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, invited by Saudi King Abdullah to become the first president of the Islamic republic to take part. Ahmadinejad was due to have joined Iranian pilgrims at Arafat but an announcement at the gathering said that "due to the heavy traffic, the president was not able to make it."
Men wearing two pieces of unstitched white cloth, called the Ahram that Muslim tradition says will serve as their shrouds, and women entirely covered apart from their face and hands tirelessly repeated the formal refrain. "I am here in response to your call, Lord, I am here," they cried, many of them in heavily-accented Arabic, gathered on a plain dotted with hills.
"This is the first time I am doing the hajj. I registered with the hajj organisation five years ago," said an elderly woman called Fatemeh, accompanied by her husband. It was on Mount Arafat - also called Jebel ar-Rahma, or Mount Mercy - that the Prophet Hazrat Mohammad (PBUH) gave his final sermon more than 14 centuries ago.
On Wednesday (today) morning, pilgrims flock Mina for the last part of the hajj - the ritual stoning of Satan. Later the same day, the pilgrims will sacrifice a beast, generally a sheep, in remembrance of the great sacrifice of Hazrat Ibrahum (AS).
This year the Saudi authorities have added a third level to the Jamarat Bridge at Mina to ease the flow of pilgrims for stoning of the devil. The crossing now allows movement of more than two hundred thousand people an hour. On Tuesday a traditional annual ceremony was held at Masjid-e-Haraam in Makkah Mukarramah to bath the Holy Kaabah and change its cover.
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