Narrating the Pilgrimage to Mecca

Abstract

for their interest, support and valuable feedback at various stages of the research. It is a great honour that Simon accepted the invitation to write the epilogue to the book.The researchers in subproject ii and iii have learned incredibly much from all research participants in Morocco and the Netherlands. If it were not for your commitment to sharing your experiences and knowledge about the pilgrimage to Mecca, much of the project's results would not have been realized. We thank you from the bottom of our hearts for your trust and will continue to treasure the stories you shared with us as precious gifts. We would like to express our gratitude also to Hanina Ajarai, Hanan Nhass and Mohamed Bouza for bringing us in touch with pilgrims who were willing to tell us about their pilgrimage experiences and for helping us refine the interview questions for the Dutch subproject. In addition, Hanina conducted invaluable interviews with elderly Moroccan-Dutch pilgrims, while Hanan has been of great help in knowledge dissemination about the project's results for a wider public through the online platform kis. It was equally wonderful to work with Said el-Amraoui of Hadjinfo and Rixt Hulshoff Pol of the Tropenmuseum for two knowledge dissemination events at the Tropenmuseum. Thank you both so much. We are also most grateful to Dik Kootstra of the Groningen Scholierenacademie and Lilian Eggens of UptoUs for developing for us teaching kits on pilgrimage for high school and secondary vocational education students.University policies on 'research-driven' education tend to focus on the added value of integrating our research projects in the courses we teach. We have found that vice versa, our research has benefited tremendously from the contributions of the students Lisa de Lang, Querien Mangel, and Gijs Wijers, who participated in the project for their ma thesis research. The discussions with them, as those with the student assistants Bas Sprenger de Rover, who interviewed managers at hajj travel agencies for us, and Lyset de Groot and Kjelda Glimmerveen, who not only meticulously transcribed the interviews for the Dutch subproject but also shared their reflections on the content of the interviews, were both very enjoyable and productive.Last but not least, we would like to thank forrest kentwell and Iris Vartinianvan der Heide for text-and copy editing the manuscript, Pierke Bosschieter for creating an excellent index and the two anonymous reviewers for critically scrutinizing the manuscript and providing valuable feedback. Obviously, any errors that have remained in the text are there despite Iris' and forrest's professional help, and the editors are fully responsible for them.