A spiritual journey from Spain to Mecca: Meet the Muslims reviving the historic Andalusian route to Hajj on horseback

As the Hajj season begins, Muslims around the world are preparing their journey for the annual pilgrimage to Mecca. Many will start looking at flights to Saudi Arabia, booking their tickets and packing their bags.

But for one group of Muslims, their journey this year looks a little different. 

Starting their trip six months ago, three men set off for the sacred pilgrimage from Spain's southern province of Huelva, in hopes of replicating the spiritual journey made by Spanish pilgrims by land on horseback. 

The ambitious expedition came about when Dr Abdallah Hernández was studying to become a geography and history teacher in Spain 30 years ago.

Although he had memorised several chapters of his country’s history, it was Al-Andalus, the Islamic kingdom on the Iberian Peninsula, that stood out to him — in particular, the Muslim pilgrimage from the early 8th century struck his heart. 

He was fascinated and promised himself he would become Muslim, and one day, perform Hajj in the same way his ancestors once did. 

The men went through the South of Europe until reaching Turkey and then downwards across the Middle East to finally arrive at Saudi Arabia. 

"Every day was an achievement on its own," Abdelkader Harkassi, one of the horsemen, tells The New Arab as he rejoices at the result of his efforts after such an arduous and courageous journey.

"Each night we were able to reach a place to camp after hours riding, it was a blessing," he adds, while taking a well-deserved break to recount the story to The New Arab as the group finally enters the doors of Saudi Arabia.

Abdelkader was born a Muslim after his grandmother converted to Islam in the mid-1900s when she married his grandfather during Spain’s protectorate in Morocco.

Although taking inspiration from Andalusian travellers like Ibn Jubayr, who either travelled across North Africa or took a ship through the Mediterranean sea before entering the Arabian desert, Abdelkader and his group’s route resembled more what the Muslim Spaniards who stayed in the peninsula incognito after the fall of Granada would take: travelling through Christian lands not to expose themselves as Muslim pilgrims. 

“We did the route we could, as crossing North Africa was impossible given that Morocco and Algeria have their borders closed, and Libya finds itself in a difficult and unstable moment,” says Abdelkader.

Six months of travelling and years of prior training to keep an old promise, the men aimed to show the world that Spanish Muslims still exist, with hopes of being able to unite the Muslim world under a practice that once connected people through a shared journey. 

Years of preparation and countless obstacles, compensated with widespread solidarity

Using horses to travel long distances was the norm during those centuries, and they were used among some pilgrims before switching to camels to survive the desert. However, using the same horses for 7,000 km straight is quite an achievement. 

“We started to train every year, with long sessions of two weeks both in the summer and the winter, crossing Spain from east to west, from south to north, across Portugal," Abdelkader shares.

"We had to test our equipment, our horses, our clothing, our physical and mental state and the camaraderie between us as a team.”

The training, though, did not consider a small detail: while Hajj journeys and caravans worked in a time when people were able to move freely across borders, modern maps are not made for Muslim pilgrims wanting to make the route by land, less so on horseback.

Their research concluded that, without a temporary importation permit or the justification to attend a race or a show, horses could not cross most countries.

The group was particularly scared of Saudi Arabia, where the government has in recent years been stricter ahead of the Hajj season to avoid logistical issues. Worries that, in the end, ended up not being a problem.

“We entered Saudi Arabia with our horses, without the authorities even asking about them. I don't think they even saw our passports, did they? They didn't even ask for them,” Abdelkader recounts gratefully.

“Allah has opened the doors for us along the way so that everything is easy.”

This ease also comes from having become popular faces worldwide, making impressive scenes every time they crossed a town, especially as the group entered Bosnia and Herzegovina and started their route through Muslim-majority countries.

Dozens of Muslims gathered to welcome them at every stop, even calling the attention of major institutions.

In Turkey, the horsemen had meetings with ministers, governors and even with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who had to cancel at the last minute as protests spread across the country at the time.

In some of those encounters, the representatives apologised for their ancestors not coming to the aid of Muslims when they were about to be expelled from Spain, says Abdelkader. 

In Syria, where the country is still processing the ousting of long-time ruler Bashar al-Assad and trying to keep a smooth transition, the arrival of the Spanish pilgrims was a moment of communal joy, more so in cities like Aleppo, Homs or Daraa, where the Assad regime had left more devastation.

“They kept chanting that they were our ancestors, since Syrians are the sons of the Umayyads, those who settled in Al-Andalus. To most people, we reminded them of the stories of their grandparents, the stories that were left in the families, or the history books," Abdelkader adds. 

Reviving a centuries-long tradition

“From very early on since the Muslim presence in the Iberian Peninsula, those who wanted to be trained in the world of knowledge, especially in the world of religious knowledge, had to go to study abroad, and generally the trip was also associated with the Hajj pilgrimage,” Maribel Fierro, a researcher at the Spanish National Research Council, tells The New Arab.

“It was something costly that entailed great dangers,” Maribel adds. “Those who did it are, above all, people from the world of knowledge, doing it also to gain reputation, as they could then bear the name of ‘Hajj’ and return to Al-Andalus with a curriculum that gave them a certain status to, perhaps, stand out from other competitors for power positions.”

Tyler Kynn, a history professor at Central Connecticut State University, explains that apart from Ibn Jubayr, an Arab geographer, traveller and poet from Al-Andalus, the main travel accounts explaining the journey that Muslims in the Iberian Peninsula might have taken are those of Al-Ayyashi and Ibn al-Tayyib from Fez. 

“Ibn al-Tayyib talks about when they get lost from their caravan because there was a sandstorm," Tyler continues.

"They woke up and the rest of the Egyptian caravan had already departed, and they did not know where to go,” he explains, describing some of the challenges that were experienced while performing Hajj at a time when it could cost pilgrims their lives. 

“For many pilgrims, when you read either medieval or early modern travel narratives, Hajj is very much the journey, the destination is the destination,” Tyler adds.

“Most of what they are writing about is the difficulty of the journey, and how they have to overcome sandstorms, disease, bandits, lack of water, all these things that are obviously very different from the modern Hajj experience where you can take a flight to Jeddah.”

Another important factor that characterised Hajj journeys was the people that were met on the way. “It was a global multicultural space with all these people from across the Islamic world coming in and gathering, a place of encounter and understanding, making Mecca and Medina arguably the most diverse places in the medieval and early modern world,” he adds. 

A spiritual journey bringing awareness and fighting prejudices 

While Abdelkader embarked on this journey wanting to help a friend keep an old promise, he and his other colleagues soon understood the true meaning of pilgrimage. 

“Travelling overland, you start to feel attached to the countryside, to the animals, to the plants, to the weather… You start to have a kind of intuition, to understand the movement of the clouds, or even to sense where the qibla (the direction towards the Kaaba in Mecca) might be without looking at the phone,” Abdelkader emotionally recounts. 

“From there we meet people, we get to know cultures, we get to know the generosity of both Muslims and non-Muslims, because a large part of the trip was through Europe.”

The trip also helped break stereotypes among those who had a negative perception about Islam and Muslims. The horsemen share that many people who encountered them confessed they did not have good references of Muslims, given what they saw on television, but they were grateful that the Spanish pilgrims showed them another image: that of Spaniards, Europeans being Muslims, dedicated to this spiritual journey.

“Everywhere we went, we were known as the ‘Spanish pilgrims’, people called us by our nationality and our religion together, without a difference,” says Abdelkader with pride.

“It has reinforced our identity in a very beautiful way, and we feel privileged and proud to have put Spanish Muslims on the map, so that people know about them.”

Despite their pride, the group feels a bit disappointed that Spanish media have barely talked about them, except for a few local channels.

Even if they have been mentioned by international outlets worldwide, their objective is to spread the word among Spaniards so that they get to know their history and heritage, and feel proud of it too, they explain. 

They also hope that their achievement serves to encourage other Muslims to take on similar journeys, not necessarily on horseback, but through different countries to revive that sense of diversity and unity that once inspired civilisations across the Muslim world to seek knowledge, enhance their spirituality, connect with their environment and meet new people.

Bianca Carrera is a freelance writer and analyst specialising in Middle Eastern and North African politics and society. She has written for Al Jazeera, The New Arab, Al-Quds Al-Araby, EU Observer and others. She is based between Spain, Morocco and Egypt.

Follow her on X: @biancacarrera25