In Egypt, the Pilgrimage to Mecca Begins With a Song

On the eve of Eid, lanterns are lit and songs rise from kitchens. These are the vanishing rituals of Egypt’s pilgrimage to Mecca.

By Amany Khairy

IN LOVE WITH JOY, drowned in sorrow, enchanted by melancholy—this is how Egyptians have long navigated the narrowness of life. Confronting tragedy with comedy, oppression with a well-timed joke, they have also preserved something more ancient: the ritual of passage, marked not by grand cathedrals or formal liturgies, but by the voices of women, the blood of sacrifices on doorposts, and songs that have traveled from grandmother to granddaughter for generations.

For the Egyptian pilgrim, the journey to Mecca is never just a journey. It is a threshold. And crossing it requires a song.

The Three Phases of Passage

More than a century ago, the folklorist Arnold van Gennep described the anatomy of every rite of passage: separation, liminality, and incorporation. The pilgrim leaves behind an old self. He stands, for a time, in the in-between. And finally, he enters a new state—blessed, renamed, reborn as hajj.

In Egypt’s folk tradition, this cycle unfolds not in textbooks but in the rhythms of daily life: in the lullabies sung to children who have not yet learned what Mecca means, in the paintings that bloom on village walls when a family member announces their intention to travel, and in the farewell songs that rise from the throats of women as the pilgrim boards a bus or a ship.

Before the journey even begins, the rite is already underway.

The First Glad Tidings

Some of the earliest songs Egyptians learn are about the Hajj. They arrive as nursery rhymes, disguised as play.

“Hajj hegeiga, O lady,
Butter and an egg, and we’ll have lunch.
Hajj hegeiga to God’s house,
The Kaaba and the Messenger of God.
I want to visit you, O Prophet,
You whose land is far away…”

This is what the folklorist would call a preliminary text: the child’s first inkling that there exists a sacred geography beyond the village, and that one day, God willing, she might go there.

Wall Paintings as Announcement and Armor

In rural Egypt, the Hajj is also a visual event. Families announce a loved one’s pilgrimage by commissioning murals on the exterior walls of their homes. These paintings are exuberant, naive, and deeply symbolic. Camels, ships, buses, and airplanes carry robed figures toward a gold-domed Kaaba. Calligraphic inscriptions offer Qur’anic verses or rhymed blessings.

But the paintings do more than announce. They protect. Before the pilgrim departs, some families smear the walls with the blood of a sacrificed animal—a practice rooted in the belief that blood wards off the evil eye. The hajj-to-be is vulnerable now, suspended between identities. The blood is a kind of armor.

The meat of the sacrifice is distributed to relatives, neighbors, and the poor. Fatta—layered bread, rice, and meat—becomes the meal of the season.

The Night the Lanterns Are Lit

On the eve of Eid al-Adha, the holiday that marks the culmination of the Hajj, Egyptians hang lanterns on mosques and houses. The 14th-century traveler Ibn Battuta noted this practice with approval: the lanterns, he wrote, let everyone know that the holy night had arrived.

In the great mosques of Cairo and the villages of the Delta, the faithful gather for takbir and tahlil—declarations of God’s greatness, affirmations of His oneness—that continue until dawn. Public bathhouses light incense and hire singers. The air smells of musk and anticipation.

And then, the procession: the mahmal, a ceremonial litter carried on a camel, preceded by nakrazan drums and the bright flutter of banners.

The Women’s Songs: Hanoun

But the most intimate music of the Hajj season belongs to women. Their songs—known as Hanoun—are not performed for strangers. They are sung in kitchens, in courtyards, at the moment of farewell.

“O visitors of the Prophet,” one song begins, “take me with you. I long to visit the Prophet. I will praise him with you.”

Another, addressed to Fatima, the Prophet’s daughter, pleads: “Open the gate. Your father has invited us.”

And then the classic farewell, repeated in countless variations across Upper Egypt and the Delta:

“Where are you going, O lady, mother of the velvet shawl?”
“I am going to visit Prophet Muhammad and the honorable Kaaba.”
“Where are you going, O lady, mother of the sky-blue shawl?”
“I am going to visit Prophet Muhammad and return to the canal people.”

These songs are rarely written down. They live in memory. And memory, in Egypt’s countryside, is growing shorter.

A Brief Revival on Social Media

Recently, some Egyptians have begun posting fragments of these songs on social media. The writer Asmaa Hashem shared a photograph of herself holding a large tambourine, recalling a text her grandmother used to sing:

“Where are you going, O lady,
With the velvet shawl?
I am going to visit the Prophet
And the honorable Kaaba.

Where are you going, O lady,
With the milk-white shawl?
I am going to visit the Prophet
And feast my eyes.”

The posts attract hundreds of comments. Elderly women correct the lyrics. Younger ones ask for translations. For a moment, the songs breathe again.

The Well of Zamzam: A Passage Within the Passage

No pilgrimage song cycle is complete without the story of Zamzam. According to tradition, the well appeared beneath the feet of the infant Ismail when his mother, Hajar, ran seven times between the hills of Safa and Marwa in search of water.

One long, chant-like song recounts the tale in vivid detail:

“Zamzam… Zamzam
O you who intend to visit Taha (the Prophet)…
Convey my greetings to him.
Tell him your lover is longing,
Sleep has been forbidden from his eyes.
Listen to my words about the story of Zamzam water.”

The song narrates Ibrahim’s departure, Hajar’s desperation, the angel’s intervention, and finally Hajar’s cry: “Zummi, zummi”—gather, gather.

For the pilgrim, Zamzam is not merely water. It is the liquid that washes away the old self. Drinking it is the final act of separation before incorporation into the new.

A Heritage at Risk

The folk traditions of Eid al-Adha and the Hajj are disappearing. Field researchers have documented a vast repertoire of Hanoun songs, but many of the oldest women who remember them are dying. The wall paintings fade under layers of new paint. The younger generation, connected to smartphones rather than grandmothers, prefers fast rhythms and electronic beats.

“There is a difference between a singer and a performer,” the poet and heritage researcher Adel Saber said recently. “What we have now is mostly performance. The music overwhelms the voice. The soul is gone.”

Yet every year, as the crescent moon of Dhul-Hijjah appears, the songs return. They return because the pilgrims still leave. They return because the mothers still weep. They return because, as one old lyric insists, the rite of passage is not complete without them.

Blessings upon the Prophet, the song goes, suffice instead of sustenance. They prevent afflictions and diseases.

“He deserves to be beaten with a whip,
Who, having the means to visit, is not satisfied.

The Prophet is beautiful, and beautiful is his neck.
From the day Gabriel ascended with him,
From the seventh heaven, his light burst forth.”