al-Maḥānī, and when they came level with Dhāt ʿIrq from the east, they left the paved road and headed west, crossing Wadi al-ʿAqīq on a graded dirt track that links the highway to Dhāt ʿIrq. They measured the distance from Wadi al-ʿAqīq to Dhāt ʿIrq and found it to be twenty-eight kilometres, according to the vehicle’s odometer.

The committee reached the Dhāt ʿIrq area, toured it and the neighbouring valleys and farms, and then set down the information and facts it had ascertained, relying on:

1 - What a number of scholars—exegetes, jurists and historians—have recorded about this miqāt; as they travelled, the committee reviewed many of the scholars’ statements describing the miqāt and noting some of its landmarks.

2 - Direct observation of the miqāt’s features—its valleys and mountains—and correlating them with what the scholars had written, especially those who documented the pilgrims’ routes and identified numerous locations with precise descriptions and distances.

3 - The help of knowledgeable locals. The committee contacted three elderly men from the region, took them along on its tours, and stopped with them at various landmarks—mountains, valleys, wells and ruins—learning from them the names of these places and all they knew about them in former times, when pilgrims travelled by camel and entered iḥrām at this miqāt, and in the present day, when modes of transport have changed and, as they stated, entering iḥrām here has ceased for more than forty years.

The committee reached the following conclusions:

1 - ʿIrqā is the summit of a high mountain whose colour, tending toward black, sets it apart from the rest of the mountain and covers its entire peak. This mountain stands higher than the surrounding terrain and extends