Once a year, on a barren plain east of Mecca, humanity’s largest act of collective worship
unfolds. For Muslims, there is no day quite like it.
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 | Sarwar Kawoosa
On Tuesday, as the desert sun climbed over the rocky hills of the Hejaz, something extraordinary happened
— as it has every year for more than fourteen centuries. Millions of people dressed in identical white cloth,
stripped of every outward sign of rank or wealth, converged on a flat and largely featureless plain in Saudi
Arabia. They raised their hands. They wept. They whispered prayers in dozens of languages toward the same
sky. And in the tradition that binds over 1.8 billion Muslims around the world, they believed — deeply,
fervently — that on this particular day, the divine mercy of God descends closer to earth than on any other.
This was the Day of Arafat, the ninth day of the Islamic lunar month of Dhul Hijjah, and the absolute
spiritual heart of the annual Hajj pilgrimage. Saudi authorities confirmed that more than two million
worshippers — including over 1.5 million international pilgrims from more than 150 countries — gathered
on the Plains of Arafat this year, despite searing temperatures approaching 44 degrees Celsius and the
shadow of regional conflict that had prompted some governments to issue travel advisories. Faith, it appears,
is not easily discouraged.
The Ritual of Standing
The central act performed at Arafat is called the Wuquf — an Arabic word meaning “the standing.” From
noon until sunset, pilgrims assemble near a 70-metre rocky hill known as Jabal al-Rahmah, the Mountain of
Mercy, and remain there in prayer, recitation, and supplication. They combine the Dhuhr and Asr prayers and
spend the intervening hours pouring out personal confessions, requests, and gratitude to God. The ritual holds
such paramount importance in Islamic law that its omission renders the entire Hajj invalid. A pilgrim may
miss other rites and still complete a valid pilgrimage. Miss Arafat, and there is no pilgrimage.
From the earliest hours of Tuesday, pilgrims began the journey from the tent city of Mina — where they had
spent the previous night — to the plains. Many travelled by bus and rail, others on foot, their white ihram
garments billowing in the dry desert wind. Volunteers positioned along every route distributed water bottles,
umbrellas, and food packages. Cooling fans misted the air at designated rest points. Saudi authorities had
deployed thousands of medical workers, security personnel, and emergency response teams, with particular
vigilance around heat management — a lesson drawn in blood from last year, when 1,301 pilgrims perished
during a catastrophic heatwave in which temperatures reached 51.8 degrees Celsius.
Fourteen Centuries of Memory
The story of Arafat stretches back to the founding narratives of Islam. It was here, according to Islamic
tradition, that the Prophet Muhammad — on what would prove to be his final pilgrimage in 632 CE —
gathered the faithful on this plain and delivered his Farewell Sermon. Standing on Jabal al-Rahmah, he spoke
of the sanctity of human life, the equality of all people before God, the rights of women, and the rejection of
tribalism. It was a moment scholars would later call the completion of Islam’s moral and legal framework.
That same day, the final verse of the Quran is believed to have been revealed: “This day I have perfected your
religion for you, completed My favour upon you, and have chosen for you Islam as your religion.”
The tradition of standing at Arafat, however, predates even the Prophet Muhammad. Islamic sources trace it
to the Prophet Ibrahim — the Abraham of the Abrahamic tradition — who is said to have prayed on this same
plain in a supreme act of submission to God. The continuity is deliberate and profound. When a modern-day
pilgrim from Jakarta or Lagos or Srinagar stands on the Plains of Arafat today, they are consciously placing
themselves inside a chain of devotion that stretches back thousands of years.
A Day That Belongs to Every Muslim
What distinguishes the Day of Arafat from most other religious observances is that it does not require
physical presence at Arafat to be meaningful. Across the Muslim world — from Istanbul’s grand mosques to
the modest prayer halls of West Africa, from the suburbs of London to the valleys of Kashmir — Muslims
who have never performed Hajj and may never do so observe this day as one of the holiest of their year.
Many fast from dawn to dusk, following the Prophet’s specific encouragement for those not on pilgrimage.
The reward, in Islamic belief, is the expiation of sins committed in the previous year and the year to come. In
Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman, the day is a public holiday. In homes around the
world, families gather for special prayers.
For those physically present at Arafat, the experience is frequently described as transformative. “It is an
indescribable feeling,” said Ahmoud, a 35-year-old engineer who made the pilgrimage from Egypt this year,
approaching the Mountain of Mercy for the first time. Many pilgrims report a complete dissolving of their
ordinary sense of self — their professional titles, their grievances, their anxieties — replaced by something
they struggle to articulate. Islamic scholars describe this as one of the purposes of the ritual: to remind every
human being of what they are outside their social roles. Equal, mortal, and utterly dependent on something
greater than themselves.
Equality in White Cloth
There is a reason the ihram — the two seamless white cloths worn by male pilgrims, with women wearing
modest white or plain dress — has endured as Hajj’s most recognisable image. The garment enforces a
radical visual equality. A Saudi prince and a Somali farmer stand side by side in the same cloth. A Silicon
Valley executive and a Malian shepherd cannot be told apart. The hierarchy of the ordinary world is, for
these days, suspended. Islamic scholars have long described the gathering at Arafat as the closest
approximation available to living humans of the Day of Judgment — the day when, according to Islamic
belief, all souls will stand before God without the protections of wealth, lineage, or status.
As Tuesday’s sunset turned the sky over Arafat to amber and the call to Maghrib prayer echoed across the
plains, the vast congregation began its movement toward Muzdalifah — the next station in a journey that will
conclude with the celebration of Eid al-Adha. The tents were folded. The prayers, uttered in Arabic and Urdu
and Bahasa and Hausa and a hundred other languages, were complete. And in the belief of those who stood
there, something had shifted — sins forgiven, slates wiped, a new year of intention begun beneath a desert
sky emptied of everything except stars and the lingering fragrance of supplication.
For the millions who were not there — in Srinagar and Cairo and Lagos and Kuala Lumpur and Birmingham
— the day passed quietly, punctuated by a fast kept, a prayer offered, a moment set aside. The plain of Arafat
may be a specific geographic location, but on the ninth of Dhul Hijjah, it becomes something larger: a shared
address for the entirety of the Muslim world, reached not only by foot and aircraft, but by intention.
The Numbers Behind the Faith
Before the COVID-19 pandemic, roughly 2.5 million pilgrims attended Hajj annually. The pandemic reduced
that number to a nearly incomprehensible 10,000 in 2020. Recovery has been gradual but determined, as the
figures below illustrate.
2021 ~60,000 COVID restrictions; Saudi residents only
2022 ~926,000 First reopening to international pilgrims
2023 1,845,045 Near-full return to pre-pandemic levels
2024 ~1,830,000 1,301 pilgrims died in heat emergency
2025 1,673,230 90% international; official GASTAT figure
2026 ~2,000,000+ Preliminary; includes domestic pilgrims
Indonesia consistently sends the largest contingent of foreign pilgrims. Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh
follow closely. India alone dispatched over 175,000 pilgrims in 2025, with the Indian Hajj Mission
coordinating transport, accommodation, and medical services throughout. “The success of Arafat Day is the
success of Hajj”.
