Saudi Arabia - The Hajj Pilgrimage Routes: The Darb Zubaydah (Saudi Arabia)

The yearly Islamic pilgrimage (hajj) to the Holy city of Makkah is one of the five pillars of Islam and one of the most important and most ancient religious pilgrimages in the world. Until today, millions of Muslim pilgrims visit Makkah every year to accomplish this religious duty. For centuries, every year, Muslim pilgrims undertook long distance journeys by well-established routes to reach the Holy City of Makkah. Some of the major routes crossed the Arabian Desert and followed traditional routes. Pilgrimage routes were not only religious axes but also commercial routes favouring movement across the ancient world, and the cultural and commercial exchanges with continuity over a long period of time. The hajj land routes leading to Makkah from the neighbouring countries materialize on the land of Arabia this centuries-old and deeply rooted cultural and religious tradition and constitute one of the most important material vestiges of the Islamic civilization in Saudi Arabia. They perfectly embody the concepts of “heritage route” that is based on the ancestral dynamics created through the Islamic religious faith shared by a large set of human groups and societies, at the origin of a sustainable and continuous civilization in a large geographical space and along historical time. The hajj routes have a worth over and above the sum of the elements making them up and highlight exchange and dialogue between countries and regions in a multi-dimensional way, with trade and administration adding to their primary religious purpose. The Arabian Peninsula, and its Holy Islamic Places, were at the heart of a large network of routes that converged to and crossed Arabia, in connection with a large set of surrounding regions. A series of hajj routes developed and thrived in different historic moments, adapting to the evolving political conditions and the rise and fall of successive Islamic empires. Early Muslim historians and geographers give details of major roads, linking Makkah with Yemen, Oman, Syria, Egypt, and Iraq. These roads initially followed former pre-Islamic trade routes, but progressively evolved from their pre-Islamic antecedents to meet the new needs related to the Islamic pilgrimage. The pilgrimage routes formed also vital arteries of communication for the soldiers, administrators, and tax collectors of the Muslim states.