Thousands of views and hundreds of comments was reaped by a video that spread on social media during the past days, for the night prayers or Tarawih prayers in the Great Mosque of Mecca, in which hundreds of thousands of people participated “during the current month of Ramadan.”
In the aerial video, rows of thousands of worshipers appeared in the courtyard of the sanctuary, in a scene described by thousands of commentators as “majestic, which we have not seen for several years.”
old scenes
Perhaps what reinforced the spread of this video with the confusion that accompanied it, was that it came the day following Saudi Arabia announced on the ninth of last March that it would allow one million Muslims to perform the Hajj this year from inside and outside the Kingdom, in a noticeable increase following the spread of the Covid-19 epidemic two years ago forced the authorities to Significantly reduce the number of pilgrims.
But it turned out later that these scenes are old, and have nothing to do with the current Ramadan.
The search through search engines showed that the clip had been posted for years on Facebook, specifically on June 2, 2019, with a watermark on it in the name of Yasser Bakhsh, which suggests that he was a photographer, according to the AFP verification service.
From the Great Mosque of Mecca (archive – AFP)
Indeed, it turned out that the video was posted on Bakhsh’s Twitter account on June 2, 2019. However, in a misleading context, the video’s publishers truncated the photographer’s name to suggest that the scenes were recent.
It is noteworthy that Yasser, who introduces himself as a photographer and photographer for the Saudi Professional League, is known for his aerial photos and videos of the Great Mosque of Mecca.
It is noteworthy that Saudi Arabia had closed the Grand Mosque in March 2020, then reopened it to pilgrims under strict procedures during July, before allowing, following three months, all Muslims to pray in it, but with a limited capacity and distance during prayers.
