Muslim Blog Muslim BlogJEDDAH – A new hajj guide app has been introduced by the Indian consulate in Jeddah to offer help to thousands of pilgrims in overcrowded hajj rituals, prompting the Saudi government to study expanding it to pilgrims from other countries.
“The Indian Haji Accommodation Locater App has been a huge success and in fact the Saudi Ministry of Hajj has said that they want to follow through how they can use it for other countries for other pilgrims,” Indian Consul General BS Mubarak told Press Trust of India (PTI) on Monday, September 29.
“We have over 9,600 downloads of the app from Google play and a further 1,000 from iTunes,” he said.
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The hajj app aims to guide Indian pilgrims who can’t find their way in the holy cities including Makkah, Madinah and Mina.
Indian Pilgrims, volunteers and members of the Hajj mission can use the app to determine their residents in about “300 buildings in Makkah Indian pilgrims, 100 buildings in Madina and 28 in camps in Mina”.
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This process depends on the data of the pilgrims provided by the Indian consulate.
“We have taken the coordinates of each of the building in Makkah, Madinah and the camps in Mina and have linked it with the data of pilgrims who would stay in a particular building or camp,” Mubarak said.
“When we feed the pilgrim’s number or passport number in the software, it gives the details of the pilgrim and shows the location of his or her accommodation on the Google Map,” he said.
Besides guiding pilgrims to their residents, the app also helps in navigating to certain locations.
Some 136,020 Indian Muslim will perform hajj this year, among them 36,000 are travelling through private tour operators.
Muslims from around the world pour into Makkah every year to perform hajj, one of the five pillars of Islam.
Hajj consists of several ceremonies, which are meant to symbolize the essential concepts of the Islamic faith, and to commemorate the trials of Prophet Abraham and his family.
Every able-bodied adult Muslim who can financially afford the trip must perform hajj at least once in a lifetime.
Hajj is officially expected to fall between October 2 and 7, with the climax falling on October 3 when the faithful descend the Mount `Arafat.
