A pilgrimage to Hajj holds great significance in the life of an Islamist. And, there is a lot of preparation that goes into it. Given that, a new mobile application has developed to help pilgrims take their minds off the trivial details and focus on the spiritual journey ahead.

The recently launched app gives you a roadmap for all the rituals, with detailed notes on every ritual. It gives information on the prayer offerings “duas” to be offered according to the time, day and location. It has the prayer schedule and the Qibla compass. The compass is ready to use and does not need calibration. The weather alarm gives you weather updates of the cities of Mecca, Madinah and Jeddah. It also gives you the traffic updates.

The Hajj and Umrah app includes offline maps. Thus, one can navigate the place easily without requiring the internet. The currency converter gives you the latest currency rate along with directions to the nearest money exchange center. There is a lost and found service. The out of boundary services enables you to make your pilgrimage more meaningful by ensuring you don’t cross the boundaries of Haram, Arafat, Mina and Muzdalifah.

In case, you take sick on the journey, there is a feature that enables you to inform your companions or friends about your condition with basic contact information such as your name, location and Mobile number. There is a free SMS emergency service. You can send 3 free messages to contacts anywhere in the world using this emergency service. The app also gives you the emergency numbers such the police station, fire station, ambulance and the Hajj agency. Pilgrims can also register complaints with the concerned authorities.

Language is often a barrier in a foreign country. The translation and the text to speech services overcomes this barrier by not only translation text from one language to another but also spelling it out so that pilgrims have not difficulty conversing. The multi-language support further makes it a very versatile app. There are other features such as the Hajj Tweets and News service.

About the Center:

GISTIC or GIS Technology Innovation Center is an interdisciplinary technology, research and innovation center contributing to the efficient managing, analyzing, understanding as well as visualizing of spatio and spatial-temporal geographic phenomena in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The Center present the assistance of mapping scheme, networks, road networks, water resource management, transportation, urban planning, land information systems, location based services amongst other. The center is devoted to technology transfer, applied research, fostering innovation ideas, outreach activities, governmental partnership and professional training. It assist technology move from the technical to the app domain serving not just academic study, however also many regional geospatial business.

Contact info:
Contact Person: Dr. Abdullah Murad
Center: GISTIC
Center Address:
GIS Technology Innovation Center
Second Floor Institute of Scientific Research
Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, Saudi Arabia
Contact Information: +966 (012) 5588821
Email Address: [email protected]
Website: http://www.gistic.org/