The Shaving and the Exit From Ihram

Shaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:

With the treaty done, the Prophet ﷺ told the Companions to rise, sacrifice their animals, shave their heads, and prepare to return, introducing a ruling new to them: one blocked from reaching the Kaʿbah exits iḥrām where he is stopped, shaving and sacrificing on the spot, and makes up the pilgrimage later. It is now a settled part of the Sharīʿah (the fiqh of iḥṣār), but the Muslims had never seen it applied, their consecrated animals were meant for the Kaʿbah, and they believed iḥrām ended only with Ṭawāf and Saʿy. Crushed by one blow after another, barred from the House, the harsh clauses, and now this, not one of them moved. Dr. Qadhi notes this as the only instance in the entire Sīrah where the Companions failed to carry out a command of the Prophet ﷺ, so traumatized were they, and compounded by the inertia of a crowd where no single person is singled out. He repeated it a second and third time; still no one stirred.

Distressed, the Prophet ﷺ withdrew to his tent and confided in Umm Salamah that he had ordered the people to shave and none had responded. She asked whether he wished them to obey, and when he said yes, advised: go out, say nothing, shave your own head, and call your sacrifice, when they see you do it, they will follow. Dr. Qadhi highlights this as a stroke of plain human wisdom. The Prophet ﷺ went out, called his barber, and shaved before them all, and at once the Companions rushed to shave, nearly competing over it. He prayed for them: "Allāhumma irḥam al-muḥalliqīn" (اللَّهُمَّ ارْحَمِ الْمُحَلِّقِينَ, "O Allah, have mercy on those who shave"). Asked "and those who trim?" he repeated the prayer for the shavers a second and third time, adding "and those who trim" only on the fourth, from which the jurists derive that shaving carries greater reward than trimming.

The sacrificial meat was still sent into Makkah, Quraysh would take the meat while refusing the Muslims, and it is said the first animal sent was the fine, well-known camel of Abū Jahl, captured at Badr: a pointed gesture that would have stung Quraysh.