Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, January 9, 2006--Afghan carpet merchants on Jeddah's Bukharia street are doing a brisk business in prayer mats, an essential item for the estimated two million pilgrims flocking to the Saudi holy city of Mecca.
A white-bearded elderly man in traditional Afghan dress seated behind a counter fiddles with his blue turquoise ring as clerks stack up rows of carpets of every colour and design at a busy store in the old quarter of Jeddah, Saudi's second largest city.
"Turkish prayer mats are big sellers," says Sheikh Ahmed Mohyeddin, 65, as his assistant Hamidallah Khan, 28, displays several green and brown mats with elaborate patterns and gold glitter.
The best ones are woven at Istanbul's Kadifeteks factory, says Hamidallah, who has been working in Sheikh Ahmed's store for the past 15 years.
Mats and worry beads are the most popular items bought by pilgrims coming to Mecca to perform the annual pilgrimage, known as hajj. Mats are used for the five-times-a-day Muslim prayers.
Although they are imported from Turkey, Iran, Egypt and increasingly China, most pilgrims perceive as blessed all purchases made during the hajj, which is one of the five pillars of Islam and a once-in-a-life-time duty for devout and able Muslims.
Nearly 2.5 million pilgrims have arrived in Saudi Arabia for the start of hajj on Sunday, local papers reported.
Sheikh Ahmed says shopkeepers and middlemen from Mecca and Medina have been coming to his store for months to stock up on mats in preparation for the hajj season, the busiest time of the year.
The wholesale price of an average Turkish mat is 17 Saudi riyals ($4.50 USD) and it retails for about 25 riyals ($7 USD), he says.
Sheikh Ahmed, considered the doyen of the Bukharia street traders, is a member of Afghanistan's Uzbek minority.
He fled his native Mazar-i-Sharif in northern Afghanistan in 1978 in the aftermath of the pro-Soviet coup that brought the communists to power, and landed in Jeddah where his uncle was a carpet merchant.
He says he immediately immersed himself in the business and took it over when his uncle passed away.
"There were only four little shops back then run by Afghans, now there are more than one hundred," he says.
It feels like little Kabul on Bukharia with bearded men in turbans and traditional baggy trousers and long shirts strolling down the street. Several bakers whip up Afghan flat bread.
Kheir Mohammed, 47, waits in his truck outside Shiekh Ahmed's store as workers load up boxes of prayer mats that he plans to sell in Mecca.
"The trend is towards Chinese mats," he says noting their price advantage at 3 riyals ($.80 USD) a piece over the Turkish ones.
In another part of old Jeddah, a Saudi store owner concedes the monopoly Afghan rug merchants have on the business.
"They have long experience and a knack for the trade," says Omar al-Attas, 60.
It is difficult to obtain an estimate of the number of Afghans living in Jeddah, a port city of more than three million and a gateway for pilgrims.
Saudi Arabia has always had close ties with Afghanistan, opening its doors to many Afghans fleeing the turmoil of their country in the 1980s and 90s.
It was among the main backers of the mujahedeen guerrillas who fought the 10-year Soviet occupation of Afghanistan that ended in 1989.
The ultra conservative kingdom had also been a key supporter of the Taliban, the fundamentalist regime that ruled Afghanistan for five years before its ouster in December 2001 in a US-led assault.
Saudi Arabia severed ties with the Taliban two weeks after the September 11 attacks on the United States in 2001. Fifteen of the 19 people involved in the attacks were Saudi citizens.
