The annual Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca is one of the five pillars of Islam and incumbent upon all able-bodied Muslims once during their lifetimes. It was arguably the largest seasonal migration of people in the early modern world from year to year bringing people together from as far apart as West Africa to Southeast Asia. In the seventeenth century the Ottoman Empire oversaw the management of the Mecca and the largest pilgrimage caravans which traveled along the road to them, known by the Ottomans as the Darb al-Hajj [translated as The Hajj Road or loosely as The Hajj Trail]. The purpose of this educational historical simulation is to bring students along that same journey and understand how the hajj fit into the larger social, political, and cultural world of the Ottoman Empire and beyond."