Acknowledgements

In: Narrating the Pilgrimage to Mecca
Editors:
Marjo Buitelaar
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Richard van Leeuwen
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Acknowledgements

This volume is the synthesizing study of the research project ‘More Magical than Disneyland: Modern Articulations of the Pilgrimage to Mecca’. We would therefore like to express our gratitude to all those involved in the realization of this book as well as those who facilitated the research project. First of all, we thank the Dutch Research Council NWO for their generous grant (350-25-150) which made this research possible and allowed us to organize the international conference ‘Narrating the Hajj’ in 2019. We are also delighted that thanks to subsequent NWO funding, we have been able to bring out this book with an Open Access License. We would like to thank the Faculty of Theology & Religious Studies of the University of Groningen and the Faculty of Humanities of Amsterdam University for facilitating the research project in numerous ways. In particular, for their indispensable help behind the scenes we would like to thank project controllers Doriena van der Horst-Smits at the UoG, and Saskia Plandsoen and Janneke Ravenek at the UoA. In addition, the faculty of Theology and Religious Studies of the University of Groningen was so kind as to host the international ‘Narrating the Hajj’ conference. To all participants in the conference; thank you for your presentations and lively discussions, which have contributed enormously to enhancing and integrating our knowledge and insights in historical and contemporary personal accounts of the pilgrimage to Mecca. We regret that we could not incorporate all papers in the volume. In addition to NWO and the Universities of Groningen and Amsterdam, we are equally grateful to the following institutions for facilitating our research: the Dutch Institute in Morocco (NIMAR), Dar al-Kutub in Cairo, the National Library in Tunis, the King Abd al-ʿAziz Al Saoud Library in Casablanca, the National Library in Rabat, and the National Library in Abu Dhabi.

Numerous people have contributed to the project in other ways. We would like to thank Kim Knibbe, Kocku von Stuckrad and Léon Buskens for their very productive feedback on the research proposal, and Jörn Thielmann for regularly sharing articles that might be of interest to the project. Léon has been a continuous support throughout the project, both as a dear friend and colleague, and also in his capacity as Director of the NIMAR, where several research team members were warmly welcomed and enjoyed using NIMAR facilities. It means a lot to us that on various occasions leading scholars in the study of pilgrimage to Mecca like Pnina Werbner, Robert Bianchi and Seán McLoughlin have provided us with the most valuable feedback. Similarly, the discussions within EASA’s Pilnet have been invaluable for embedding the two ethnographic subprojects in the wider anthropological study of pilgrimage. In particular, we would like to thank Anne Fedele, Simon Coleman, John Eade and Mario Katić 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 Vartinian-van 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.

Marjo Buitelaar and Richard van Leeuwen

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