The description of ḥajj by European writers takes notice only of its outward actions and has never tried to discover their real significance and inner value. The details of ḥajj will be discussed later on, but looking broadly at the scene at Makkah during the ḥajj days, one is struck in the first place by the unity which is achieved among the discordant elements of humanity. Deeper than that, however, lies another value of ḥajj, and this is the higher spiritual experience which is made possible by this unique assemblage of men, the experience of drawing nearer and nearer to God till man feels that all those veils which keep him away from God are entirely removed and he is standing in the Divine presence. It is true that God does not live in Makkah, nor is the Ka‘bah the House of God in a material sense; true, too, that a Muslim is taught to hold communion with God in a remote corner, in solitude, in the dead of nights, and thus all alone he goes through the experience of drawing nearer to God; but there is yet a higher spiritual experience to which he can attain in that vast concourse of men assembled in the plain of ‘Arafāt. Every member of this great assemblage sets out from his home with that object in view. He discards all those comforts of life which act as a veil against the inner sight. He is required to put on the simplest dress, to avoid all talk of an amorous nature and all kinds of disputes, and to undergo all the privations entailed by a journey to a barren land like Arabia, so that he may be able to concentrate all his meditation on the Divine Being. The comforts of life are undoubtedly a veil which shut out the other world from human sight, and sufferings and privations certainly make a man turn to God. To concentrate all one’s ideas on God, not in solitude but in the company of others, is thus the object of ḥajj. A man may have the company of his wife and yet he must not have amorous talk with her; he may be in the company of his adversary, yet he is not allowed to have any quarrel with him; and all this that he may have a higher spiritual experience, the spiritual experience not of the hermit who is cut off from the world, not of the devotee holding communion with God in the corner of solitude, but of the man living in the world, in the company of his wife, his friends and his foes. The higher significance of a man’s spiritual experience