Talib bin Mahfouz and Saeed Al-Mansour

Okaz/Saudi Gazette

 

MINA — The pilgrims spent Monday night in Muzdalifah where they prayed Maghreb and Isha together. They also collected pebbles to throw at Jamarat early Tuesday. Each pilgrim had at least collected seven small stones each, just little more than the size of a chick pea to throw at the Jamrat Al-Aqaba (the big Jamrah) on Tuesday morning.



Ibn Al-Abbas, the Prophet's cousin, had collected seven small stones for Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) from Muzdalifah on the morning of the Eid day. The Prophet put them in his hand and said: Stones should not be bigger than these. He warned against extremism in religion and said it was the religious extremism which had destroyed the believers before us. A number of scholars said the Prophet did not collect more than seven stones each a little bigger than the chick pea and a little smaller than the hazelnut.



Some pilgrims collected the stones just from under the mattresses on which they slept while others gathered them from the small mountains surrounding Mina. The pilgrims will need seven pebbles to throw at the Jamarat on the first day and 21 each for the second and third days.



The stone collection has become a trade for some Makkawi children. They collect the stones, clean them and put them in bottles which they sell to the pilgrims at SR5. "This price is negotiable," one of the young boys said.



Some pilgrims would collect large quantities of stones to distribute among other pilgrims free of charge just seeking reward from Allah.



"I spent the Eid night in Muzdalifah collecting stones to give free of charge to the pilgrims," said Thamir Ahmed Al-Barakati, a young man from Makkah.



He said he decided to do this job after seeing some old and sick pilgrims unable to collect their stones.



Ahmed Saeed Al-Assad, a Saudi pilgrim, said he did not like to obtain his stones as a gift from other pilgrims or to buy them. "I like to collect my own stones by myself," he said.



Sheikh Tawfiq Bin Saeed Al-Saiegh, an imam of a mosque, saw nothing wrong in buying the stones. "The children are not charging for the stones but for the efforts they make collecting them," he said.



A number of pilgrims said they would collect more than their needs of stones to keep the rest as gifts to their loved ones back home.