Pilgrims headed to the holy city of Mecca now have a new Blackberry application with a range of useful tools to help them better understand and perform the rituals of the pilgrimage.
Developed by Asgatech, a BlackBerry Alliance Member, the application is available as a free download on BlackBerry App World.
It supports six different languages — Arabic, English, Turkish, Farsi, Urdu and Bahasa — and has videos and detailed text describing the different ways to perform Hajj.
The application includes narrated videos of Hajj and Umrah rituals, right from the period before ‘Ihram’ — the sacred state which a pilgrim must enter in order to perform the pilgrimage — until its end, with illustrations, pictures and videos.
The Hajj is the annual pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, and is the largest pilgrimage in the world, which is a religious duty of every able-bodied Muslim who can afford to perform it.
The Umrah is the smaller pilgrimage that can be undertaken at any time of the year.