Hundreds of thousands of Muslim pilgrims from around the world raised their hands to heaven and offered prayers of repentance on the sacred hill of Mount Arafat in Saudi Arabia on Friday, an intense day of worship considered to be the climax of the annual hajj. Multitudes stood shoulder to shoulder, feet to feet, for the emotional day of supplication in the desert valley where Muslims believe the Prophet Muhammad delivered his final sermon, calling for equality and unity among Muslims. The experience sent many pilgrims to tears. Muslims believe prayer on this day at Mount Arafat, about 20 kilometers (12 miles) east of the holy city of Mecca, is their best chance at salvation and spiritual renewal. The pilgrims set out for Arafat before dawn, chanting as they trekked. They remain there until nightfall in deep contemplation and worship. Read: A hajj closer to normal: 1 million Muslims begin pilgrimage “I feel I am so close to God,” said Zakaria Mohammad, an Egyptian pilgrim praying as the sky brightened over the hilltop. “He gave me such joy. This is my feeling now — joy, great joy.” Men wore unstitched sheets of white cloth resembling a shroud, while women wore conservative dress and headscarves, their faces exposed. The hajj is a once-in-a-lifetime duty for all Muslims physically and financially able to make the journey, which takes the faithful along a path traversed by the Prophet Muhammad some 1,400 years ago. “God brought me here,” said Khadije Isaac, who traveled to Mount Arafat from Nigeria, her voice clipped with emotion. “I cannot describe the happiness that I have.” Strict pandemic limits had upended the event for the past two years, effectively canceling one of the world’s biggest and most diverse gatherings and devastating many pious Muslims who had waited a lifetime to make the journey. This year's pilgrimage marks the largest since the virus struck, although the attendance by 1 million worshippers remains less than half of the pre-pandemic influx. All pilgrims selected to perform the hajj this year are under age 65 and have been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Pilgrims spend five days carrying out a set of rituals associated with the Prophet Muhammad and the prophets Ibrahim and Ismail, or Abraham and Ishmael in the Bible, before him. The rituals began on Thursday with the circling of the Kaaba, the black cube in the center of Mecca’s Grand Mosque, which Muslims around the world face during their daily prayers wherever they are in the world. Read: 3 more Bangladeshi hajj pilgrims die in Saudi Arabia in three days Around sunset on Friday, the pilgrims will march or take a bus 9 kilometers (5.5 miles) west to the rocky desert of Muzdalifa, where they comb the area for pebbles to carry out the symbolic stoning of the devil. That rite will take place on Saturday in the small village of Mina, where Muslims believe the devil tried to talk Ibrahim out of submitting to God’s will. Pilgrims stone the devil to signify overcoming temptation. The ritual is a notorious chokepoint for surging crowds. In 2016, thousands of pilgrims were crushed to death in a gruesome stampede. Saudi authorities never offered a final death toll. In their most noticeable effort to improve access, the Saudis have built a high-speed rail link to ferry masses between holy sites. Pilgrims enter through special electronic gates. Tens of thousands of police officers are out in force to protect the areas and control crowds. With so many people from so many places crammed together, public health is a major concern. Saudi Arabia’s Health Ministry urged pilgrims to consider wearing masks to curb the spread of coronavirus, although the government lifted a mask mandate and other virus precautions last month. The ministry also advised pilgrims to drink water and be aware of the signs of heat stroke in the desert, where temperatures can exceed 40 degrees Celsius (105 degrees Fahrenheit). Once the hajj is over, men are expected to shave their heads, and women to snip a lock of hair in a sign of renewal. Around the world, Muslims will mark the end of the pilgrimage with Eid al-Adha, or Festival of Sacrifice. The holiday commemorates the prophet Ibrahim’s willingness to sacrifice his son Ismail at God’s request. Muslims traditionally slaughter sheep and cattle, dividing the meat among the needy, friends and relatives.

Israeli police beefed up forces in east Jerusalem and blocked busloads of Muslim pilgrims headed to the Al-Aqsa mosque for the holiest night of Ramadan, threatening to escalate already heightened religious tensions that have unleashed the worst unrest in the holy city in years. Police defended their actions as security moves, but these were seen as provocations by Muslims who accuse Israel of threatening their freedom of worship. Tensions in east Jerusalem, home to the city’s most sensitive Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites, lie at the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and have triggered major rounds of violence in the past. Police chief Koby Shabtai said he was deploying more police in Jerusalem following a night of heavy clashes on Friday between Palestinians and Israeli police. Israelis and Palestinians were bracing for more violence in the coming days. Saturday night is “Laylat al-Qadr” or the “Night of Destiny,” the most sacred in the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. Thousands of worshippers were gathered for intense nighttime prayers at Al-Aqsa. “The right to demonstrate will be respected but public disturbances will be met with force and zero tolerance. I call on everyone to act responsibly and with restraint,” Shabtai said. Police reported clashes with Palestinian protesters late Saturday in Jerusalem’s Old City, near Al-Aqsa, and in the nearby east Jerusalem neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah, where dozens of Palestinians are fighting attempts by Israeli settlers to evict them from their homes. Police reported two arrests, and Palestinian medics said two protesters were hospitalized after being beaten by police. Police said one officer was wounded after being struck in the face with a rock. On Sunday evening, Jewish Israelis begin marking “Jerusalem Day,” a national holiday in which Israel celebrates its annexation of east Jerusalem and religious nationalists hold parades and other celebrations in the city. On Monday, an Israeli court is expected to issue a verdict on the planned evictions in Sheikh Jarrah. Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza — territories the Palestinians want for their future state — in the 1967 Mideast war. Israel annexed east Jerusalem in a move not recognized internationally, and views the entire city as its capital. The Palestinians view east Jerusalem — which includes major holy sites for Jews, Christians and Muslims — as their capital, and its fate is one of the most sensitive issues in the conflict. Earlier Saturday, police stopped more than a dozen buses that were filled with Arab citizens on the main highway heading to Jerusalem for Ramadan prayers. Israel’s public broadcaster Kan said police stopped the buses for a security check. Muslims fast from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, and travelers, upset that they were stopped without explanation on a hot day, exited the buses and blocked the highway in protest. Kan showed footage of the protesters praying, chanting slogans and marching along the highway toward Jerusalem. The road was reopened several hours later. Ibtasam Maraana, an Arab member of parliament, accused police of a “terrible attack” on freedom of religion. “Police: Remember that they are citizens, not enemies,” she wrote on Twitter. In Friday night’s violence, Palestinian medics said more than 200 Palestinians were wounded in clashes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound and elsewhere in Jerusalem. The violence drew condemnations from Israel’s Arab allies and calls for calm from the United States and Europe, and prompted the Arab League to schedule an emergency meeting on Monday. Police said 18 officers were injured. Protests broke out at the beginning of Ramadan three weeks ago when Israel restricted gatherings at a popular meeting spot outside Jerusalem’s Old City. Israel removed the restrictions, briefly calming the situation, but protests have reignited in recent days over the threatened eviction of dozens of Palestinians from their homes in east Jerusalem, which is claimed by both sides in their decades-old conflict. Other recent developments, including the cancellation of Palestinian elections, deadly violence in which a Palestinian teenager, two Palestinian gunmen and a young Israeli man were killed in separate incidents in the West Bank, and the election to Israel’s parliament of a far-right Jewish nationalist party, also have contributed to the tense atmosphere. One right-wing lawmaker, Itamar Ben-Gvir, briefly set up an outdoor “office” in the heart of a Palestinian neighborhood last week, infuriating local residents. The Al-Aqsa mosque compound is the third holiest site in Islam. It is also the holiest site for Jews, who refer to it as the Temple Mount because it was the location of the biblical temples. It has long been a flashpoint in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and was the epicenter of the 2000 Palestinian intifada, or uprising. In recent days, protests have grown over Israel’s threatened eviction in Sheikh Jarrah in east Jerusalem of dozens of Palestinians embroiled in a long legal battle with Israeli settlers trying to acquire property in the neighborhood. The United States said it was “deeply concerned” about both the violence and the threatened evictions, and was in contact with leaders on both sides to try and de-escalate tensions. “It is critical to avoid steps that exacerbate tensions or take us farther away from peace,” the U.S. State Department said. “This includes evictions in East Jerusalem, settlement activity, home demolitions, and acts of terrorism.” The European Union also urged calm and expressed concern about the potential evictions. Egypt and Jordan, which made peace with Israel decades ago, condemned its actions, as did the Gulf kingdom of Bahrain, which was one of four Arab countries that signed U.S.-brokered normalization agreements with Israel last year. In a call to Palestine TV late Friday, President Mahmoud Abbas praised the “courageous stand” of the protesters and said Israel bore full responsibility for the violence. Abbas last week postponed planned parliamentary elections, citing Israeli restrictions in east Jerusalem for the delay. Israel’s Foreign Ministry had earlier accused the Palestinians of seizing on the threatened evictions, which it described as a “real-estate dispute between private parties,” in order to incite violence. Hamas, which rules the Gaza Strip and opposes Israel’s existence, has called for a new intifada. Protest groups affiliated with Hamas said they would resume demonstrations and the launching of incendiary balloons along the heavily-guarded Gaza frontier. Israeli media said the army sent additional troops to the area in response. Hamas has largely curtailed such actions over the past two years as part of an informal cease-fire that now appears to be fraying. In an interview with a Hamas-run TV station, the group’s top leader Ismail Haniyeh warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to “play with fire” in Jerusalem. “Neither you, nor your army and police, can win this battle,” he said.

A handful of coins unearthed from a pick-your-own-fruit orchard in rural Rhode Island and other random corners of New England may help solve one of the planet’s oldest cold cases. The villain in this tale: a murderous English pirate who became the world’s most-wanted criminal after plundering a ship carrying Muslim pilgrims home to India from Mecca, then eluded capture by posing as a slave trader. “It’s a new history of a nearly perfect crime,” said Jim Bailey, an amateur historian and metal detectorist who found the first intact 17th-century Arabian coin in a meadow in Middletown. That ancient pocket change — among the oldest ever found in North America — could explain how pirate Capt. Henry Every vanished into the wind. Also read: Ancient Greek god's bust found during sewage work On Sept. 7, 1695, the pirate ship Fancy, commanded by Every, ambushed and captured the Ganj-i-Sawai, a royal vessel owned by Indian emperor Aurangzeb, then one of the world’s most powerful men. Aboard were not only the worshipers returning from their pilgrimage, but tens of millions of dollars’ worth of gold and silver. What followed was one of the most lucrative and heinous robberies of all time. Historical accounts say his band tortured and killed the men aboard the Indian ship and raped the women before escaping to the Bahamas, a haven for pirates. But word quickly spread of their crimes, and English King William III — under enormous pressure from a scandalized India and the East India Company trading giant — put a large bounty on their heads. “If you Google ‘first worldwide manhunt,’ it comes up as Every,” Bailey said. “Everybody was looking for these guys.” Until now, historians only knew that Every eventually sailed to Ireland in 1696, where the trail went cold. But Bailey says the coins he and others have found are evidence the notorious pirate first made his way to the American colonies, where he and his crew used the plunder for day-to-day expenses while on the run. The first complete coin surfaced in 2014 at Sweet Berry Farm in Middletown, a spot that had piqued Bailey’s curiosity two years earlier after he found old colonial coins, an 18th-century shoe buckle and some musket balls. Waving a metal detector over the soil, he got a signal, dug down and hit literal paydirt: a darkened, dime-sized silver coin he initially assumed was either Spanish or money minted by the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Peering closer, the Arabic text on the coin got his pulse racing. “I thought, ‘Oh my God,’” he said. Research confirmed the exotic coin was minted in 1693 in Yemen. That immediately raised questions, Bailey said, since there’s no evidence that American colonists struggling to eke out a living in the New World traveled to anywhere in the Middle East to trade until decades later. Also read: Stunning ancient Australian rock art shows local images over ... Since then, other detectorists have unearthed 15 additional Arabian coins from the same era — 10 in Massachusetts, three in Rhode Island and two in Connecticut. Another was found in North Carolina, where records show some of Every’s men first came ashore. “It seems like some of his crew were able to settle in New England and integrate,” said Sarah Sportman, state archaeologist for Connecticut, where one of the coins was found in 2018 at the ongoing excavation of a 17th-century farm site. “It was almost like a money-laundering scheme,” she said. Although it sounds unthinkable now, Everyone was able to hide in plain sight by posing as a slave trader — an emerging profession in 1690s New England. On his way to the Bahamas, he even stopped at the French island of Reunion to get some Black captives so he’d look the part, Bailey said. Obscure records show a ship called the Sea Flower, used by the pirates after they ditched the Fancy, sailed along the Eastern seaboard. It arrived with nearly four dozen slaves in 1696 in Newport, Rhode Island, which became a major hub of the North American slave trade in the 18th century. “There’s extensive primary source documentation to show the American colonies were bases of operation for pirates,” said Bailey, 53, who holds a degree in anthropology from the University of Rhode Island and worked as an archaeological assistant on explorations of the Wydah Gally pirate ship wreck off Cape Cod in the late 1980s. Bailey, whose day job is analyzing security at the state’s prison complex, has published his findings in a research journal of the American Numismatic Society, an organization devoted to the study of coins and medals. Archaeologists and historians familiar with but not involved in Bailey’s work say they’re intrigued, and believe it’s shedding new light on one of the world’s most enduring criminal mysteries. “Jim’s research is impeccable,” said Kevin McBride, a professor of archaeology at the University of Connecticut. “It’s cool stuff. It’s really a pretty interesting story.” Mark Hanna, an associate professor of history at the University of California-San Diego and an expert in piracy in early America, said that when he first saw photos of Bailey’s coin, “I lost my mind.” “Finding those coins, for me, was a huge thing,” said Hanna, author of the 2015 book, “Pirate Nests and the Rise of the British Empire.” “The story of Capt. Every is one of global significance. This material object — this little thing — can help me explain that.” Every’s exploits have inspired a 2020 book by Steven Johnson, “Enemy of All Mankind;” PlayStation’s popular “Uncharted” series of video games; and a Sony Pictures movie version of “Uncharted” starring Tom Holland, Mark Wahlberg and Antonio Banderas that’s slated for release early in 2022. Bailey, who keeps his most valuable finds not at his home but in a safe deposit box, says he’ll keep digging. “For me, it’s always been about the thrill of the hunt, not about the money,” he said. “The only thing better than finding these objects is the long-lost stories behind them.”

Muslim pilgrims have started arriving in Mecca for a downsized hajj to being on Wednesday amid coronavirus pandemic.