Bad organization or another effect of global warming? Saudi Arabia complains that thousands of pilgrims went without permission. The images from social media are shocking. People dressed in the pilgrim’s traditional white kelebia and head coverings collapse on the side of the road or are slumped in wheelchairs, half-dead or even dead. In many cases the piles have not even been moved. Hundreds of pilgrims to Mecca have died this year due to extremely high temperatures, lack of water and shelter. Temperatures in Mecca, Islam’s holiest city, reached 51.8 degrees Celsius. How many died, no one knows for sure. According to official figures from Saudi Arabia, the dead have exceeded 1,300, the Reuters news agency speaks of 2,700 cases of heatstroke.

License from Saudi Arabia

The dead are from Egypt, Indonesia, Jordan, Iran, Iraq, Senegal, India and Tunisia, but half are from Egypt. They are probably elderly people. Many pilgrims perform the annual Hajj pilgrimage, an obligatory duty for Muslims, before they die. “Honestly, this year’s Hajj was shameful,” Ilsha, a pilgrim from Aswan in southern Egypt who preferred not to give his full name, told Deutsche Welle via WhatsApp. “It was very difficult, especially during the stoning. People just fell to the ground.” Part of the Hajj ritual involves pilgrims throwing stones at three walls, a symbolic form of stoning the devil. “Several times I told the security staff about a pilgrim who had fallen to the ground. The distance to throw the stones was really long and at the same time the sun was high and it was so hot.”

To better understand why such a large death toll, one should know that a pilgrim to Mecca must have an official permit from Saudi Arabia. And because they usually want more people in than there is room, Saudi Arabia operates a quota system. Travel to Mecca is usually facilitated by travel agencies, which are often affiliated with Muslim community organizations or mosques back home. They arrange accommodation, meals and transportation to Mecca. Some victims’ families accuse the Saudi authorities or their home countries of not being organized enough or of not providing enough protection from the extreme heat with tents or shelters. Others blamed those who arrived in Mecca without permission. “More than 171,000 unregistered pilgrims were detected in the country before the start of Hajj,” said Saudi Director of Public Security Mohammed bin Abdullah al-Bassami. Saudi security agencies had launched a campaign to arrest anyone performing the Hajj illegally

Every year more heat

Unregistered pilgrims cannot access the same kinds of facilities – air conditioning, water, shade, misting or cooling centers – that registered pilgrims have, which may also have led to the high death toll. DW spoke to a manager of a private Egyptian tour company that has been bringing Egyptian pilgrims to Mecca for several years, who was in Saudi Arabia this week. He did not want to give his name. “The temperatures were high and people didn’t comply, and they also didn’t know how dangerous the heat was,” he said, “everyone was just doing whatever they wanted and it was all poorly planned. There weren’t enough tents for everyone. But there was certainly no panic. , people were happy to be standing on Mount Arafat.”

A 2019 study of whether Saudi Arabia’s efforts to cool pilgrims during the Hajj were successful concluded that while official measures helped, there was no escaping the fact that climate change would make the Hajj every year more hot and therefore more dangerous. “But the pilgrims also need to be better educated, more aware”, points out the Egyptian tour operator. “The state definitely has obligations and bears responsibility. But the behavior of some of the pilgrims showed a lack of awareness. And by that, I mean awareness of how to perform the Hajj rituals. For example, many pilgrims don’t realize that you can just stand on a lower slope to perform the ritual.”

Editor: Irini Anastasopoulou