rules of the Koran, and arrived at Mecca during the four-day period of the 7th to the 10th day of the month Dhul—ʾHidjeh. Should he make the journey at any other time of the year, he earns a "meritorious entry to his credit," but cannot call himself a Hadj. At the present time, a journey to Mecca is not the difficult undertaking which it was at the time of Mohammed, although there are tribes even now, whose members, in order to accomplish a Hadj to Mecca, must start out six and even nine months ahead of the time they desire to arrive in the Holy City.
In the course of the centuries which have gone by since Mohammed lived, the routine of a Hadj pilgrim has been fixed so carefully, and so all-embracingly, that there is hardly an hour of the four days which he may call his own. Mohammed himself is often mentioned as having instituted the annual pilgrimage, but this is not true. The custom of visiting the Holy Kaabah antedates Mohammed by many centuries, and Mohammed had nothing to do with its continuance; it is a fact that he could not have abolished it, even if he had so desired. By making the pilgrimage a sacred duty to all true Moslems, he facilitated the acceptance of Islam by the Meccans, who earned considerable revenue from the many thousands of pilgrims journeying to the Holy Kaabah from all parts of North Africa and Western Asia, where the wandering tribes of the desert Arabs had spread in their migrations.
When he arrives within a short distance of the Holy City, the Hadj pilgrim lays aside the
