The memory of Imam Khomeini’s pilgrimage to Mecca to perform Hajj rituals

 

His Excellency, the Imam became successful in 1933 (1312 solar and 1352 lunar calendar) to visit the house of God once in his life. This journey to Hajj, which was made with a lot of hardships, had a pleasant and agreeable memory for him. He told the story of that pilgrimage as follows:
“I went on pilgrimage to Mecca only once in my life. When I set off, I used different means of transportation. This trip took me 17 days to reach there.”
The Imam was not negligent of guiding the people even on the Hajj trip; he was chosen as the clergyman of the caravan to teach the people the rites of pilgrimage as his legitimate duties.
Ayatollah Mas’udi says in this regard: I will tell you what I heard about the Imam’s journey to Hajj by myself. He told me that he had gone on pilgrimage to Mecca only one year and had performed the ceremonies once in his life. He had used different means of transportation and his trip had taken 17 days to get there:
“We traveled by ship to the other side of the sea. When I entered the ship, I saw that a group of different people from Tehran and other towns were on board, but they were all anxious and uncomfortable. When I asked them the reason, they answered it was because of the difficulty of the practices and rites of Hajj they were so worried.”
“Therefore, I thought I was charged with a duty to help them not to be so agitated. I asked one of them to gather the individuals in one place so that I could explain to them the issues of performing the rites. On the first day, I said that Hajj was a movement forward in tranquility without anxiety; but that movement had to be for the sake of God. It had to be made with sincerity and good-will.”
Then, Imam Khomeini continued:
“I had to lessen their anxiety first, and then make them feel at ease, so that I might teach them the procedures. So, it took a few days to prepare the situation for those pilgrims. Then, I started like this: ‘we will go to the fixed place called Miqat first, wear our pilgrimage garbs and after that continued the journey. But there are some formalities you must observe in tranquility.’ after that I noticed that they were not anxious any more. On the sixth day, I started to tell them about the ceremonies. After we had disembarked, the passengers felt more comfortable and began to ask about the ceremonies. I had taken with me the book: Wasa’il-al-Shi’a; thus I used it to teach them the ceremonies and to myself too put them into practice.”
The Imam’s wife also remembered some points to tell us about this Hajj pilgrimage, to which we will point at the end of this report.
His Excellency, the Imam (s) went from Qom to Tehran by bus after his second child was born. This was about the time when he was a scholar while Haj Sheikh Abdul Karim Haeri was teaching at the theological seminary in Qom in 1933 (1312 AH and 1352 lunar calendar). Then he went to Ahwaz and from Ahwaz to Iraq, from Iraq to Lebanon and there he set off by ship to Jeddah in Arabia. On board, he met a few merchants from Qom: Mr.Aqazadeh, his nephew Mr. Mustafavi and Mr.Sadeghi. It is probable that the Imam rented a house alone in Mecca and these three people used to go to him for greetings in his company.
It is worth mentioning that the Imam, after coming back from Hajj, went to Lebanon again with the same three men. Then, the Imam went to Najaf and from that city he set off for Iran again and came to Qom. His arriving in Qom was simultaneous with the well-known overflow of the flood that caused a lot of destruction.