Then, as now, there was little local effort to limit the number of pilgrims to safe levels or to provide adequate infrastructure and security to handle the masses of visitors. Annual influxes of hundreds of thousands of pilgrims closely packed into steamships were blamed for spreading cholera through port cities from Bombay to Hamburg, making the hajj a major cause of death around the world.

Although it is not yet clear how they came to be in Saudi Arabia, it appears that their parents took them with them on pilgrimage to Mecca.

Doing so would not only reduce the number of pilgrims traveling to Mecca, making the visits safer it would also force Saudi Arabia to share the enormous profits of religious tourism.

In 1997, a large number of Bengali children were deported to India from Saudi Arabia, where they had been taken on the pretence that they would visit Mecca. Instead they remained in the country, forced to beg every day from the many pilgrims there.

Religious tourism played a central role in the region s nineteenth century economy (until the arrival of Texas oilmen in the 1930s, Mecca was almost entirely dependent on visiting pilgrims). But the numbers of visitors began to rise sharply after the city fell under the control of the Saudi royal family in 1924.

And the first thing I wanted to do as a Muslim was go to Mecca and visit the Kaaba, the holiest shrine of Islam.

Nine countries, fifteen bottling plants, all facing Mecca.

I am on a pilgrimage.

We are on a pilgrimage.

Some are to Koranic prophets even older than Muhammad others are to Shia imams or Sufi saints and still others are to hallowed Muslim women. The name of one holy place, the necropolis of Makli in Pakistan, hints at its medieval ambition to become an alternative destination for pilgrims Makli means the little Mecca.

Pilgrim apos s Rest, Kataragama

Stay in San Miguel and you may just profit from the experience.

It is not uncommon for pilgrims from, say, India or Indonesia to adopt strict, conservative tenets after their return from Mecca. As influence is ultimately a matter of numbers, it should come as no surprise that the Saudis seek to maximize the inflows of Muslim pilgrims each year.

Then San Miguel will have just one boss.

Mike kept blazing away at it.

You brag about being a pilgrim apostle.

Saint Pierre And Miquelon

Hey, McKinley, you got your St Christopher medal?

Lourdes attracts around six million people a year, making it one of the biggest sites of Catholic pilgrimage in the world.

Be my guest, but get out of San Miguel, will you?

Get as much distance between yourselves and San Miguel as possible.

Although religious shrines in Jerusalem were open to pilgrims, local Palestinians were unable to attend religious services in the Holy City of Jerusalem.

People gather during the annual Catholic pilgrimage at the sanctuary of Notre Dame de Lourdes.

These are not servants. These are worshippers.

LOS ANGELES The recent stampede in Mecca, in which more than a thousand pilgrims making the hajj were trampled to death, is a tragic but powerful reminder of the city s prominence in the Muslim world. According to theological tradition, every Muslim is required to make a trip to the city once in their lifetime, if they are able to do so.

In St. Michael's Church there is a big organ.

Keep this bad boy as our guest, only until Baxter leaves San Miguel and heads for the frontier.

Indeed, since taking control of Mecca, the Saudi government has used the city and the hajj as centerpieces in its efforts to place the kingdom at the center of the Muslim world and spread Wahhabi Islam. As soon as the Saudi royal family seized the city, the new rulers destroyed the Shia and Sufi shrines that might have undermined their sought after monopoly over the ritual aspects of the pilgrimage.

Many pilgrims say they will not be cowed.

He himself said this would be his last pilgrimage to Our Lady at Czestochowa.

Since independence alone, over 45,000 have been given assistance to make hajj pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia, and over 150 have been given assistance to make pilgrimages to Christian and Jewish holy sites in Russia, Greece and Israel.

Not simply to the flanks of the mountains, but to the very iced peaks which are the destiny of the pilgrims.

Saudi Arabia s Pilgrimage to Pakistan

Women are forbidden to travel alone, even on pilgrimage.

In a few days I hear there will be a troop of cavalry passing through San Miguel.

And you leave San Miguel and never come back for the rest of your days.

The pilgrims come here by the hundreds of thousands they're not going to get in trucks and buses and go down there.

The new arrangements regulating access to the shrine provide that the shrine should remain strictly a place of worship, with no additions or alterations.

Lourdes prepares for pilgrims in shadow of attacks

On 10 and 11 June, the military and police components of the mission assisted 1,000 Greek Cypriots to make a pilgrimage to the Church of Saint Barnabas near Famagusta for the first time in 31 years.

As all delegations have just witnessed, the South Korean authorities are still inciting confrontation between the north and the south of Korea, even at this sacred forum of the United Nations.

But the last leg of the journey to Mecca itself remained a monopoly of the camel owning Bedouin. When the Saudi government introduced Fords to the area in around 1930, it needed all of its military resources to prevent the Bedouin from destroying them.

As the organist of St. Michael's I need the keys.

St. Louis to Springfield to Peoria to Chicago.

Now, they're 13 miles up the road in Santa Ana.