We both arrived at Cornell in 2000 in the departments of History and Near Eastern Studies, respectively. Over the years, the Hajj came up again and again as a topic of common interest, discussed over countless coffees and teas. Finally, at some point forgotten by us both, we endeavored to turn this shared interest into something more concrete and discussed getting a small group of scholars together to explore different aspects of the pilgrimage to Mecca. We approached Marigold Acland at Cambridge University Press with our idea, and she was very supportive. It has taken us a few years to bring the volume into the form it is in now, but slowly and surely the manuscript has taken shape. We owe Marigold and her generosity of spirit a great debt. We are grateful also to Will Hammell, Sarika Narula, Maria Marsh, Joshua Penney, Emma Collison, Mary Bongiovi, Sarah Green, Suzette Costello, Sathish Kumar, Holly Johnson, and especially Kate Gavino, who was a wonderful steward of the project.

We wish to thank our contributors, who all worked hard to meet the various deadlines we set them; Joe Lowry for vetting the glossary; Nij Tontisirin for designing the map of the world Muslim population; and Juan Campo, Faheem Moheed, and Saud al-Sarhan for making available photographs from personal and private collections. Most importantly, we wish to thank our families, who put up with literally years of the two of us disappearing haphazardly to the Ithaca Bakery, where we would sit and work on this volume. The spirit of all of these people – near and far – is in this book.