Large-scale social phenomena, pilgrimages cannot be reduced to their only religious dimension. They participate fully in the mobility that crosses the region, fuelling tourism development and trade. Ephemeral crossroads, extraordinary events, pilgrimages form a melting pot where not only people come together, but also goods and ideas that swarm with the return of pilgrims, leading to material, political, even psychological, important and often lasting transformations. Gathering sometimes huge crowds, accompanied by intense festive activities, they are both challenges to public order and put to the test of the urban public space that they transform and remodel. The contributions gathered in this volume attempt to report, by multiplying the situations observed and the angles of approach, of this polymorphous event that is the pilgrimage to the Maghreb and the Middle East. A universal phenomenon, it takes on many specific features in this vast region and remains one of the main vectors of community integration. |