History of Hajj Pilgrims By Sea Ship
History of Hajj Pilgrims By Sea Ship
The voyage time was useful in training to perform the rituals of Hajj and recitation of the Holy Quran whose sheer beauty of language is reputed to have been a frequent instrument of conversion in its own right. Humans are spiritual creatures and spiritual matters. Humanity's sense of beauty, and decency our power to love, our creativity and seek blessings of our creator have been ingrained in our genes.
The largest shipping line operating from Indian ports was the Mogul Line, which was founded in 1888 and managed by the British company Turner Morrison. The oldest of the Mogul Line ships was SS Alawi built in 1924, followed by SS Rizwani built in 1930. These ships were scrapped in 1958 and 1959 respectively. Other early Mogul Line ships were SS Saudi capacity 999, SS Muhammadi and SS Muzaffari capacity 1460, SS Islami capacity 1200, MV Akbar capacity 1600, SS Noorjehan capacity 1756 and SS Nicobar capacity 1170.
Mogul Line had the monopoly of the Hajj pilgrim traffic. For about 6-7 months of the year, it carried pilgrims from India, Pakistan, Ceylon, Bangladesh and Burma to Jeddah, while the rest of the year, the ships were deployed for carrying cargo cum passenger service from India to the Red Sea ports including Aden and Djibouti.
The Pan Islamic Steamship Co Ltd in 1960 and later Crescent Shipping in 1975 played a vital role in carrying the pilgrims for Karachi and Chittagong to Jeddah. Their main operation was carrying the pilgrims but they also had some cargo capacity and were used as cargo cum passenger ships during off Hajj season.
In the early 1980's the number of sailings started falling due to the competitiveness of air travel, with low-cost flights, and seaborne trade started declining. Pakistani pilgrim ships became more and more old and required heavy repairs and maintenance. It was thus commercially not viable to run them any more.
The last ship to perform Hajj service was MV Shams (1994) (under PNSC) before it was scrapped. Thus the seaborne pilgrimage runs effectively ended. All the Shipping companies in Pakistan and India have been liquidated due to the supremacy of the aviation sector.
Some of the Pakistani passenger ships which carried pilgrims to Jeddah were as follows:
====================================================== Vessel Name Owner ====================================================== Safina-e-Arab(a) Pan Islamic Steamship Com. Ltd Safina-e-Murad Pan Islamic Steamship Com. Ltd Safina-e-Hujjaj Pan Islamic Steamship Com. Ltd Safina-e-Abid Pan Islamic Steamship Com. Ltd Safina-e-Arabb (II) Pan Islamic Steamship Com. Ltd Shams Crescent Shipping Lines Ltd/PNSC ======================================================
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