Saudi Gazette

MAKKAH – Millions of Haj and Umrah pilgrims who visit the holy land every year quench their spiritual thirst through having cups of the holy water of Zamzam during their stay in the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah. They also take bottles of Zamzam to their homeland to distribute among their kith and kin.

The United Zamzam Office has distributed 2.6 million bottles of Zamzam water among the Haj pilgrims since the beginning of the current Haj season until Monday. Abdul Hadi Zamzami, chairman of the board of directors of the office, said that there are seven field service group offices under the office that are engaged in the distribution of the holy water. A total of 47.39 million liters of Zamzam has so far distributed among the pilgrims in Makkah and Madinah, he said.

These bottles are from the King Abdullah Project for Zamzam Water. The project is using the highly advanced technology to make available of the holy water, with preserving its purity and unique quality, to the largest number of pilgrims and visitors to the Grand Mosque in Makkah and the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah. The late King Abdullah inaugurated the project, built at a cost of SR700 million, in Sept. 2010.

The project includes 42 distribution points at its headquarters in Kudai in Makkah, providing Zamzam water bottles around the clock. The holy water is pumped from the well to the project for purification and sterilization through filtering at its purification plant by employing high tech methodology.

After the purification process, the water pumps to the huge tanks in Kudai and at King Abdulaziz Sabeel point (public Zamzam supply outlet). The bottled Zamzam conforms to the highest degree of purification, packing, storage and automatic distribution in line with the latest means and methods of global technology.

The holy water supplied at the Grand Mosque is from the Kudai tank while the water carried by trucks to the Prophet’s Mosque in Madinah is from the Sabeel tank. There are tanks with a capacity of 10,000 cubic meters of the holy water at the project. The water is pumped to the bottling plant after its purification and sterilization. The bottling plant consists of several buildings with high tech facilities, and these buildings include one for production line and warehouse of bottles, in addition to emergency station buildings. The length of pipelines from the Zamzam well to Kudai project is one kilometer. There are two giant pumps to pump the holy water from the well to the project.

The Zamzam Well is located within the Grand Mosque, 21 meters east of the Holy Kaaba and its opening is 1.56 meter below mataf (circumambulation area around the Holy Kaaba) surface.

The history of Zamzam dates back to the period of Prophet Ibrahim and his son Ismail, who was born nearly 4000 Hijri years (BC1910) ago. It is a miraculously generated source of water from God, which sprang when Prophet Ibrahim’s infant son Ismail was left with his mother Hajar in the desert, where he was thirsty and kept crying.

She was desperately seeking water for her infant son, but she could not find any, as Makkah is located in a hot dry valley with few sources of water. Hajar ran seven times back and forth in the scorching heat between the two hills of Safa and Marwa, looking for water. Getting thirstier, the infant Ismail scraped the land with his feet, from where suddenly water sprang out.

It was reported in Prophet’s Tradition (Hadith) about the virtues of drinking this holy water. The Prophet (peace be upon him) has said: “The best water on earth is Zamzam water. In it is food for the hungry and cure for the sick.”

“The water of Zamzam is for whatever purpose it is drunk for.”