Saudi’s Grand Mosque gets 80,000 Qur’an copies for distribution to pilgrims

Saudi Arabia’s Grand Holy Mosque has been equipped with 80,000 new copies of the Holy Quran ahead of this year’s Hajj.

Ghazi al-Thibiani, the director general of the General Directorate for the Holy Quran and Books, said that these included new Braille copies of the Holy Quran for the blind, and copies of the interpretation of the meanings of the Holy Quran in various languages, including English, Urdu and Indonesian, the official news agency SPA reported on Wednesday.

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Al-Thibiani added that the directorate has prepared a special programme to celebrate pilgrims, where it will gift a copy of the Holy Quran for every pilgrim, in addition to a programme for the meanings of the Holy Quran with translations in more than 60 languages, through a QR that is downloaded on smart phones.

On Tuesday, authorities revealed they had registered a total of 172,562 pilgrims who have traveled from across the globe to Saudi Arabia’s Medina so far ahead of this year’s Hajj.

Statistics on arriving and departing pilgrims in Medina, issued by the Ministry of Hajj and Umrah, showed that 156,828 pilgrims have arrived through the Prince Mohammed bin Abdulaziz International Airport in Medina since receiving the first Hajj, while the land immigration centre received 13,097 pilgrims who arrived in the city through land border crossings.

The statistics also revealed the nationalities of pilgrims staying in Medina, showing that Indonesian pilgrims are the highest proportion of international pilgrims (24,478), followed by pilgrims from India, Bangladesh, Iraq, and Iran.

Statistics showed that 76,955 pilgrims left Medina over the past few days on their way to the holy sites in Mecca. (Alarabiya)