BACKGROUND The Hajj Ceremony, the largest annual gathering in the world, is the most important life event for any Muslim. This study was designed to evaluate the incidence of stroke among Iranian pilgrims during the Hajj ceremony. METHODS We ascertained all cases of stroke occurring in a population of 92,974 Iranian pilgrims between November 27, 2007 and January 12, 2008. Incidence and risk f...

OBJECTIVE We compared the incidence of common diseases and accidents among Iranian pilgrims during Hajj 2004 and 2005, and determined the factors affecting the prevalence of each disease. METHODS We conducted this comparative study on 30037 Iranian pilgrims during Hajj 2004 and 75676 pilgrims during Hajj 2005, in Mecca and Medina in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. In this study, 23 types of comm...

Mass gatherings at religious events can pose major public health challenges, particularly the transmission of infectious diseases. Every year the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA) hosts the Hajj pilgrimage, the largest gathering held on an annual basis where over 2 million people come to KSA from over 180 countries. Living together in crowded conditions exposes the pilgrims and the local population...

The Hajj os Calculus is a simple, nondeterministic procedure which generates precisely the class of non-3-colorable graphs. In this note, we prove exponential lower bounds on the size of tree-like Hajj os constructions .

Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca, Saudi Arabia, is a unique mass gathering event that raises public health concerns in the host country and globally. Although gastroenteritis and diarrhea are common among Hajj pilgrims, the microbial etiologies of these infections are unknown. We collected 544 fecal samples from pilgrims with medically attended diarrheal illness from 40 countries dur...

This article studies the problem of evil in Abrahamic religions and philosophical traditions, and tries to restate their solutions in a contemporary language. The author aims at affirming traditional Abrahamic approaches to theodicy that preserve divine omnipotence, benevolence, and omniscience, but without denying the reality of evil.

BACKGROUND One of the most important complications for women during hajj trip is menstruation and most commonly spotting, which is the second important problem. This complication would cause some problems in performing religious rites as the main purpose of the trip and on the other hand, it would lead to psychologic complications for women. Controlling psychologic complications of women during...

This note describes an integrated recognition system for identifying missing and found objects as well as missing, dead, and found people during Hajj and Umrah seasons in the two Holy cities of Makkah and Madina in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. It is assumed that the total estimated number of pilgrims will reach 20 millions during the next decade. The ultimate goal of this system is to integrate...

TO THE EDITOR—We read with interest the correspondence by Karagoz et al [1] regarding our article on the prevalence of Middle East respiratory syndrome coro-navirus (MERS-CoV) nasal carriage and compliance with the Saudi health recommendations among pilgrims attending the 2013 Hajj [2]. On behalf of all authors of our original article, we would like to respond to their correspondence. Karagoz e...

Hajj os theorem states that every graph with chromatic number at least k can be obtained from the complete graph K k by a sequence of simple operations such that every intermediate graph also has chromatic number at least k. Here, Hajj os theorem is extended in three slightly diierent ways to colorings and circular colorings of edge-weighted graphs. These extensions shed some new light on the H...