pilgrimage. Later Muslim rulers were responsible
for supporting the pilgrimage and maintaining the
holy sites in Mecca. They helped supply provi-
sions and organize pilgrim caravans that traveled
overland via the cities of cairo, damascUs, bagh-
dad, Basra, and Sanaa or by boat to the Red Sea
port of Jidda. Before modern times, the journey to
Mecca could be quite hazardous; pilgrims might
be attacked by thieves or die of disease. Only a few
thousand were usually able to go, but today, with
the availability of motorized transportation such
as the automobile and the airplane, as many as
2.5 million Muslims perform the hajj each year. To
accommodate such large numbers of pilgrims, the
government of saUdi arabia has spent more than
$100 billion dollars since the 1950s to modern-
ize and expand the pilgrimage facilities. To make
the pilgrimage safer and more manageable, it has
cooperated with the governments of other Muslim
countries to set quotas for the number of pilgrims
each of them is allowed to send. Other Muslim
governments, such as those of egypt, pakistan,
tUrkey, indonesia, and malaysia, play important
roles in the regulation of the pilgrimage, which
helps demonstrate their support for Islam to their
citizens.
See also Five pillars; umra; ziyara.
Further reading: Robert R. Bianchi, Guests of God:
Pilgrimage and Politics in the Islamic World (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2004); David Long, The Hajj
Today: A Survey of the Contemporary Pilgrimage to
Makkah (Albany: State University of New York Press,
1979); F. E. Peters, The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to
Mecca and the Holy Places (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 1994); Michael Wolfe, The Hadj: An
American’s Pilgrimage to Mecca (New York: Grove Press,
1993).
hal (Arabic: condition, state of being)
Religious experience is seen by many as a defin-
ing feature of religion itself. Scholars of religion
hold different points of view as to whether it
constitutes an extraordinary type of experience
or whether it is conditioned by language, culture,
and perception—in other words, by ordinary
human existence in the world. In the comparative
study of religions, a dual classification of religious
experience has been proposed—theistic and non-
theistic. The first involves personal encounters
with a god that are discontinuous with everyday
lived experience, such as those attributed to
moses, Paul, mUhammad, and Teresa of Avila. The
second is based on impersonal encounters with a
more abstract force or principle of order, such as
those found in esoteric Hinduism and Buddhism.
Some scholars make a differentiation between
profoundly powerful external experiences and
contemplative inward experiences.
Hal is a term the Sufis have used in their
discourses to describe a kind of theistic, inward
religious experience. They adapted it from the
technical vocabulary of early Muslim scholars
of Arabic language, medicine, and philosophy.
Al-Muhasibi (d. 857) of Basra, a contemplative
mystic, is thought to have been the first to have
employed it in relation to mystical experience.
The hal was understood as an inner state or spiri-
tual “encounter” that descends from God into the
heart of the mystic. Most Sufi thinkers considered
it to be a spontaneous state of grace, or “flash of
lightning,” that was one of many possible states
in the quest for higher consciousness, or intimate
knowledge of God. Unlike the maqam, or spiritual
“station,” the hal could not be attained as a result
of the Sufi’s own intentions or efforts. Although in
theory it was discontinuous with everyday lived
experience, the language Sufis used to describe
the different kinds of states they experienced
reflected the wider world in which they lived.
Among the states they identified were those
of “repentance,” “longing,” “love,” “intimacy,”
“contraction,” “expansion,” “delight,” and even
“terror.” The leading writers who contributed to
the development of the idea of the spiritual state
among Sufis were al-Sarraj of Tus (d. 988), al-
Hujwiri of Lahore (d. ca. 1072), al-Qushayri ofhal 283 J