“Last year, three million came for the hajj...”

June 8, 2016 4:09 PM

Mecca Goes Mega [The New York Times] A building boom in the city’s sacred center has created a dazzling, high-tech 21st-century pilgrimage.

The Italian photographer Luca Locatelli [New York Times Slideshow], visiting Mecca this year during the umrah period, captured how radically the city has changed to accommodate this growing influx of pilgrims. Until the first half of the 20th century, this was a small city of spacious stone houses famed for their mashrabiyah, or latticed windows and balconies. Five hills known as the rim of Mecca encircled the Grand Mosque and the Kaaba, or House of God, located in the city center. Today, all a visitor would recognize from older images of Mecca are the Ottoman domes of the Grand Mosque, its minarets and the Kaaba. The ancient hills, the old stone homes and many of the sites linked to the life of the Prophet Muhammad have been obliterated by towering shopping malls, hotels and apartment blocks.

posted by Fizz (26 comments total)

Like all other sorts of costs, the costs of buildings follows a radically skewed stable law (Pareto? Zipfian? who knows). The first is the Hajj Mosque, the second is the giant clock tower next to it.
posted by hleehowon at 4:26 PM on June 8, 2016

I extremely dislike what has been done to Mecca. 7 star hotels overlooking the Kaaba, destruction of historic sites and presence of things like shopping malls. I performed the Hajj as a kid 30 years ago and Mecca was a totally different place and it was a totally different experience from what it is now, and not for the better (with the exception of air conditioning which was in short supply back then).

But at the same time 3 million people are now able to do the Hajj this year and this probably wouldn't be possible without mega hotels and malls (the destruction of historic sites was unnecessary and done for idealogical reasons). 30 years ago it was probably less than a million people. There are something like 1.6 billion Muslims in the world and it is an obligation for all of them to perform the Hajj once if they are able so 3 million in a year is still nowhere near enough.

I don't know what the end-game for this is - there are too many points where everyone has to be at one place at the same time for this growth to continue indefinitely but the only things I can see happening for the next few years are more and bigger buildings.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 4:38 PM on June 8, 2016 [16 favorites]

There are some Temples in India that hold particular importance for Hindus and I have had to deal with some long lines in order to climb up a mountain and pray, but nothing of this magnitude or scale. The longest I recall waiting was an hour and a half. Thankfully, many of these Hindu holy sites and Temples have been relatively untouched. There are some smaller commercial shops that sprout up along the major roads that lead to these places but the Temples themselves are fairly well regulated with regards to what can or cannot be built around them.
posted by Fizz at 5:00 PM on June 8, 2016

Or, you know, they could throw some money at having better roads to make sure that more than 2,000 people don't get trampled to death again.

But sure, why not write about the fancy new towers.
posted by Dr and Mrs Eaves at 5:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

I wish that we had the ability to tag posts with our own tags visible only to ourselves just so I can scroll down Metafilter and tag things as 'cyberpunk" over and over and over again as things in modern life today look like something straight out of a William Gibson novel.
posted by I-baLL at 5:41 PM on June 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Stunning pictures. Thank you for posting.
posted by wemayfreeze at 5:55 PM on June 8, 2016

My parents have gone on the Hajj twice and they much prefer Medina. They have nothing but bad things to say about how the Saudis treat pilgrims especially ones from Asia (hello! racism). My dad still cannot stifle his outrage about the time he got lost in the hills around the city for a few hours in his pilgrim's garb and flip flops and nobody he stopped to ask for directions could speak English or any other language besides Arabic.

The Saudis appeared to be unconcerned/resentful about Muslims fulfilling their obligation and more concerned with making money. It appears that the apartments-to-let and other rental properties around the city are either owned by the Royal family or their associates.

And the widespread anger over their destruction of the old city and historical sites just keeps growing.
posted by nikitabot at 5:59 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Wahabbists despise idolatry, and seek to protect the faithful from that sin by destroying every artifact and archaeological site and even standing buildings from the pre-modern. The damage they have done to our shared human heritage is incalculable, and goes far, far beyond the Arabian peninsula.

I am usually pretty tolerant of acts of faith that are not my own, but I'm sorry, the libraries of Timbuktu are not leading anyone into idolatry, and you are harming me, personally, by destroying my heritage as a civilized human being.
posted by Slap*Happy at 6:02 PM on June 8, 2016 [24 favorites]

Dr and Mrs Eaves: "Or, you know, they could throw some money at having better roads to make sure that more than 2,000 people don't get trampled to death again.

But sure, why not write about the fancy new towers."

...Well, to start with, the person who wrote the article probably doesn't have the money to build better roads. Continuing on from there, the people who are in charge of building better roads aren't the people who wrote the article. Going a step further, the publication which published the article about the towers is also in no position to build roads. And bringing things to a conclusion, writing an article about something doesn't prevent you from throwing money at things.

But if, by some strange twist of fate, article author Basharat Peer were rich enough to contribute money to build better roads, and had enough political clout in Saudi Arabia to ensure that the money he contributed would be used to build better roads, well, he could totally write the article and throw money at roads, without having to choose between them.
posted by Bugbread at 6:03 PM on June 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Bugbread, the "they" in my sentence was the Saudi government, not the author of the article or the publication in which the article appeared. Sorry, I should have been clearer.

My snark got in the way of two points that so was trying to make. First, the Saudi government needs to pay more about pilgrims' safety; 2,000+ people dead because of bad roads is both tragic and extremely fixable. Second, it felt kind of gross to read an article about a supposedly modernizing city which made not even a single mention of a serious infrastructure problem that could easy cause more deaths in future years. Surely improving pilgrim safety is part of coming into the 21st century, too?
posted by Dr and Mrs Eaves at 6:20 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm not Muslim so my opinion about Mecca is irrelevant. But I was surprised not to see a photo of the Clock Tower Building itself in the NYT piece. It is jaw-droppingly tacky, at least in the photos I see. As a progressive I see lots of value in modernizing the Hajj, but it's sad and jolting to see such an ugly monstrosity looming over the Kaaba. Also very odd to me that the clock tower recalls European secular architecture and not something more keeping with Islam, like a stylized giant minaret.

Also I was alarmed to read this week that Iran is banning citizens from the Hajj this year. That's an extraordinary thing for them to do. The proximate cause for the ban is related to the stampede disaster last year (2400 dead). But it's hard not to read it as competition between Iran and Saudi Arabia over leadership of Islam.
posted by Nelson at 7:26 PM on June 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

The Hajj is meant to be a great leveller: once you don the pilgrim's robe, your status in the world ceases to matter. I'm not sure how that fits with a five-star hotel and a luxury mall. Then again, Lourdes is now a sprawling monument to kitschy tat and a place for teenagers to get smashed on cheap wine after spending the day pushing pilgrims around in wheelchairs. But it's curious that the austerity of Wahhabism towards historical sites and religious practice is accompanied by building projects on a scale that's reminiscent of Catholicism at its Renaissance height of power. Or perhaps not.
posted by holgate at 9:27 PM on June 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

History moves in cycles, I suppose.
posted by DoctorFedora at 10:35 PM on June 8, 2016

There is lots to unpack in the changes to Mecca. Many changes, from streamlined border controls to new roads and tents, seem largely for the good. Other changes though...as any portmanteau in a storm said, they feel like they have changed the nature of the place for the worse.

I find the older pictures in this set interesting as a comparison.

My mind and stomach get a little bit squiffy trying to imagine having to plan the changes that were needed to allow Mecca to (more) safely accept an increase in pilgrims in just over a century. What Saudi wants to do for the next improvments are already under way, but it doesn't feel sustainable.
posted by sarcas at 12:34 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Whoa, guys, slow down!
posted by Bugbread at 12:50 AM on June 9, 2016

Wahabbists despise idolatry

It's not just wahabbists, idolatry is a major sin in mainstream Islam. Yet barely any Muslim questions bowing and prostrating to a rock from outer space five times a day and being obligated to go visit said rock at least once in a lifetime. "Allah knows best", as any local imam would say in reply to such a silly question. :)
posted by shala at 6:52 AM on June 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

one of the biggest reasons i don't see myself performing this pillar of islam anytime soon.
posted by cendawanita at 8:22 AM on June 9, 2016

The pilgrimage results in people being trampled to death?

In reading the link wiki, I'm astounded that there is so much racist blame attached to different nationalities as causing the deaths, rather than authorities identifying the issue as an infrastructure problem.

Surely their shared religion teaches them to love and respect all people, if not especially fellow believers?

You know, like the Christians do?

Sorry, neither a Christian or a fan of any religion here. It always blows my mind when religious people pick and choose which precepts to follow--like hating on others or watching people die is less important than Whoo! Road trip!

Also that whole old testament Christian stoning witches thing,
posted by BlueHorse at 8:49 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

I find the older pictures in this set interesting as a comparison.

This image in particular, where you see the jumble of the city walled out to create an orderly sacred space, then the Kaaba.

The architectural changes to Mecca remind me a little of how Mussolini destroyed the spina di Borgo and with it the experience of going from dark, narrow Roman streets into St Peter's Square, that vast space laid out to show you that you are small and the Holy Mother Church is big. The infrastructure of pilgrimage always sets up a tension between the sacred and profane, and it's hard to scale up the sacred: now, a pilgrim circling the Kaaba surely can't help but see that fugly tower looming overhead.
posted by holgate at 8:55 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

> It's not just wahabbists, idolatry is a major sin in mainstream Islam.

Not like it is for the Wahhabis; you're conflating wildly different things.

> Sorry, neither a Christian or a fan of any religion here. It always blows my mind when religious people [blah blah blah]

OK, we've gotten the obligatory "religion sux amirite?" comment out of the way; maybe we can carry on discussing the article?

Anyone interested in what Mecca used to be like when it was a small town dominated by actual inhabitants should get hold of The Sheltered Quarter: A Tale of a Boyhood in Mecca by Hamza Bogary, who was born there in 1932. There are good annotations but no map; fortunately it's easy to find maps online.
posted by languagehat at 8:58 AM on June 9, 2016 [4 favorites]

Not like it is for the Wahhabis; you're conflating wildly different things.

Hmm, in which of the four Sunni madhabs idolatry is not a major sin?
posted by shala at 10:02 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Which of the four Sunni madhabs mandates going around destroying tombs?
posted by languagehat at 11:52 AM on June 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Which of the four Sunni madhabs mandates going around destroying tombs?

I think you've made some liberal assumptions about my original comment. Wahabbis, or to use a better term, Salafis, are not just ISIS. There are millions of Salafis around the world. There are hundreds of newly built Salafi mosques around the world. Salafis don't just run ISIS, they run Saudi Arabia itself. They control Mecca and Medina. One could use just that fact alone to argue that Salafis are mainstream Islam nowadays. I have never said that all Salafis go around destroying monuments. But in at least two states where they do have absolute control, they either are, or there are no perceived idols left to destroy. Unless you know of any such things in Saudi.
posted by shala at 12:27 PM on June 9, 2016

I know all that. If you think the worldwide influence of Saudi Wahhabism is a good thing, I don't think we have much to say to each other.
posted by languagehat at 8:59 AM on June 10, 2016

Umm, what? Based on your last two responses, there seems to be some kind of a reading comprehension issue going on, so yes, let's leave it at that I guess.
posted by shala at 9:51 AM on June 10, 2016

Salafis are not mainstream Islam, although they would love to be considered that. There are millions of Muslims around the world who do not practice Salafism, despites the Saudis' efforts to force their particular creed in everywhere. Idolatry is handled differently in different places/cultures/communities and I think most people would agree that it is restricted to instances of actual worship unlike in Salafism, where it can apply to any object/site without evidence of any worship actually taking place.
posted by nikitabot at 11:13 AM on June 10, 2016 [3 favorites]