The hajj, an annual mass pilgrimage of muslims into the holy city of Mecca, has been the site of a number of deadly stampedes in the past. Among this number is included a particularly bloody trampling last year in which at least 700 but possibly as many as 2000 people died (official reports from Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian Capital, show 769 deaths, but other countries’ reports show that many more people may have died). Specifically, the 2015 stampede happened while pilgrims were on the way to Jamarat, the ritual in which pilgrims throw stones at pillars which represent the devil. 
Among the dead in the 2015 hajj disaster are approximately 400 Iranian pilgrims, prompting some in Iran to blame the Saudi Arabian government for failing to guarantee the safety of Iranian pilgrims. Officially, Iran announced that its pilgrims would not be attending the 2016 hajj, which is an unprecedented and unexpected move, seeing as Iran is an officially muslim country and the hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam. In response to the disaster, officials in Saudi Arabia have upgraded safety and security measures in an attempt to ensure that pilgrims are kept safe from harm during future hajj events.
Among the increases in security for the 2016 hajj are electronic walking paths and gates to control the flow of people between holy sites in the city, GPS tracking wristbands distributed to pilgrims so officials can get advance warning of crowd buildup and prevent too many people from becoming concentrated into one area, and more efficient scheduling of events. Each of these measures is intended to help mitigate the issues caused by the massive number of people entering the city and being crammed into (relative to the number of people) small areas around the sacred sites visited during the hajj.
        This is a perfect example of the lived religion. Huge numbers of people participate in this event and must trust the religious government officials to organise and plan it. The rituals of Hajj are difficult to plan and manage when the number of participants is in the millions. The problems compound because mismanagement can result in disastrous, deadly consequences. The risk of injury and death is particularly high because of the nature of some rituals performed at the hajj. The Jamarat is one such dangerous ritual because of the throwing of stones. In several previous incidents, pilgrims have been killed by stones thrown from either the other side or from further back. In 2004, the Mecca Region Development Authority replaced the pillars with wall-like structures and added a second tier in order to reduce the risk to participants. 
Aside from the danger of being hit by rocks, the main source of risk to hajj pilgrims comes from the simple fact that the hajj involves huge crowds of people moving from place to place all together. People sometimes trip and fall, but the crowd is so large and has such momentum that it doesn’t stop, resulting in the fallen pilgrims being trampled underfoot.  In order to prevent crowds from building to such proportions that this happens, every aspect of the journey has to be tightly controlled, from housing, to mealtimes, to the flow of people through the city during the six days of religious rituals. The improvements to the scheduling and security measures appear to have been successful during the 2016 Hajj, as no mass death or other tragic incidents are reported to have occurred during the event.
