Word: godly
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...sheets: one around the waist and the other over the shoulders. The female pilgrim is required to wear a long dress and cover her hair. The pilgrimage is considered the most fortunate moment of one's life, the time when one can travel to the Blessed City asking for God's forgiveness, hoping for complete forgiveness of one's sins and transgressions. Thus men's sheets and women's dresses are usually white, signifying a purer rebirth of the soul...
...this state, every pilgrim enters Mecca as an equal; all are humble before God. The King of Saudi Arabia, the President of Egypt, the Sultan of Omman, the Shah of Iran, all are indistinguishable from their subjects, dressed in the same two-sheet simple dress. Worldly conventions are discarded, distinctions eliminated, racial disparities unrecognized. One is freed from one's bondage to both oneself and others, affirming a direct commitment to the One and Only Being, admitting Him as the sole dispenser of one's fate. Coming to pay tribute to the Creator, the pilgrim is no longer a subject...
...buildings dwarf older houses, and the markets wind along narrow streets and alleys. In the heart of the city lies the huge star-shaped Haram Mosque, and in the middle of its courtyard stands the Ka'ba, the holiest shrine of Islam. Given the honorific title of "House of God" by God Himself in the Koran, the Ka'ba has thus been venerated by Moslems. It is a simple four-walled structure of black, cemented stone, empty from the inside. Believed by Muslims to have been built first by Adam and later raised by the prophet Abraham...
With the conquest of Mecca eight years after the Hegira, Mohammed destroyed the idols and cleansed the sacred house of its pagan deities. He re-established it as a place of worship to God alone. Reverting it to its original use he could then perform the pilgrimage "hajj," setting an example for millions of his followers throughout the ages. All rituals of the pilgrimage are rich in traditions reflecting the religious actions of Abraham (Mohammed...
...first of these traditions is the circumambulation of the Ka'ba. Starting at a certain corner, the worshipper completes seven rounds while reciting prayers, calling for mercy and forgiveness and professing total submission to God. Hundreds of thousands of people flow in circles around the Ka'ba each day and night during the whole year, for this practice is not limited to the period of the pilgrimage. During the night the crowds thin out and the worshipper can pray in close vicinity to the Ka'ba. Moslems sit under the endless arches of the mosque reading the Koran, but starting...