The ḥadīth of Jābir, the rites of the Farewell Ḥajj
historicalShaykh Yasir Qadhi explains:
From the 8th onward the books of Sīrah and Ḥadīth carry hundreds of narrations of what he ﷺ did at each moment of the Ḥajj, most of it the material of a fiqh class, whereas in Sīrah we care for the spiritual and moral. But there is one ḥadīth reckoned the mother of them all: the ḥadīth of Jābir in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, three or four pages long. It comes through Jaʿfar al-Ṣādiq from his father Muḥammad al-Bāqir, of the Āl al-Bayt, descendants of the Prophet ﷺ through ʿAlī and al-Ḥusayn, whom we hold to be among the most righteous people of their time, without the powers other groups ascribe to them. Al-Bāqir, then a young man, went with others to Jābir ibn ʿAbdillāh, by now a blind old Companion and among the last of the Ṣaḥābah to die; when al-Bāqir named his lineage, Jābir set a hand on his head, opened his shirt to touch and bless the great-great-great-grandson of the Prophet ﷺ, and said, "ask what you wish, you are welcome, my nephew", for to honour the righteous of the Ahl al-Bayt is part of Sunni Islam. Asked about the Ḥajj, blind Jābir raised nine fingers and said, "for nine years the Prophet ﷺ did not perform Ḥajj."
❧The standing at the House
At Dhū al-Ḥulayfah, Asmāʾ bint ʿUmays gave birth to Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr, and sent word asking what to do; the Prophet ﷺ told her to wash, bind herself, and enter iḥrām, for a woman enters iḥrām even in her menses or postpartum bleeding, though she does not pray or make ṭawāf until it ends. Mounted on Qaṣwāʾ, his camel, he set out, and Jābir said he saw before him nothing but riders and pedestrians, and behind, and to the right, and to the left, the same, the Prophet ﷺ prominent in their midst, "and the Qurʾān was still descending upon him," Jābir remembering it seventy years later, the nostalgia flooding back. He raised the talbiyah, لَبَّيْكَ اللَّهُمَّ لَبَّيْكَ، لَبَّيْكَ لَا شَرِيكَ لَكَ لَبَّيْكَ، إِنَّ الْحَمْدَ وَالنِّعْمَةَ لَكَ وَالْمُلْكَ, and let others vary their wording without a word of correction. Reaching the House he touched the Black Stone and made seven rounds, three at a jog and four walking, then prayed behind Maqām Ibrāhīm reciting وَاتَّخِذُوا مِنْ مَقَامِ إِبْرَاهِيمَ مُصَلًّى, with Sūrat al-Kāfirūn and al-Ikhlāṣ in the two rakʿah, keeping the Maqām between himself and the Kaʿbah. He returned and kissed the Black Stone, then went out to Ṣafā reciting إِنَّ الصَّفَا وَالْمَرْوَةَ مِنْ شَعَائِرِ اللَّهِ, saying "I begin with what Allāh began with." Climbing Ṣafā until he could see the Kaʿbah, he faced it and proclaimed لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ، صَدَقَ وَعْدَهُ، وَنَصَرَ عَبْدَهُ، وَأَعَزَّ جُنْدَهُ، وَهَزَمَ الْأَحْزَابَ وَحْدَهُ, how fitting now that Mecca had returned to him without a battle fought, Allāh alone having fulfilled the promise and routed the armies, and he stood long in duʿāʾ and repeated it three times, then descended to Marwah and ran the valley floor where our mother Hājar once ran, unable to see Ismāʿīl, which is why the green posts today mark where the ground once dipped away.
❧"ʿUmrah and Ḥajj are joined till the Day of Judgment"
When he urged those without animals to make it an ʿUmrah and leave iḥrām, Surāqah ibn Mālik stood, the same Surāqah of the Hijrah, come back all these years later just to be with the Prophet ﷺ once more, and asked, "is this for this year only, or forever?" The Prophet ﷺ interlaced the fingers of his hands, شَبَّكَ بَيْنَ أَصَابِعِهِ, and said that ʿUmrah had entered into Ḥajj until the Day of Judgment, this is the law until yawm al-qiyāmah, not for that year alone.
❧Namirah, and the Quraysh's elitism at ʿArafah
On the 8th, the Day of Tarwiyah, the Ṣaḥābah re-entered iḥrām and went to Minā, the Prophet ﷺ leading Dhuhr, ʿAsr, Maghrib, ʿIshāʾ, and Fajr there; then, the next morning, he had a tent pitched for him at Namirah, just outside ʿArafah. Here a custom must be understood: Minā and Muzdalifah lie inside the Ḥaram, the sacred precinct where you cannot hunt, uproot a tree, or bear arms, but ʿArafah, holy for the Ḥajj, lies outside it. So the Quraysh, in their elitism, had invented a doctrine: "we are the people of the Ḥaram; how can we leave it to stand at ʿArafah? That is for the rest of you." They would not go to ʿArafah at all, but halted at the very boundary, at al-Mashʿar al-Ḥarām in Muzdalifah, thinking themselves too holy to leave the sanctuary. So the new Muslims of Quraysh assumed the Prophet ﷺ would keep their way; but when the sun passed the meridian he called for his camel, rode past al-Mashʿar al-Ḥarām, and went straight on into ʿArafah, to the valley of ʿUranah in its basin, where he addressed the people and prayed Dhuhr and ʿAsr, shortened and joined, with one adhān from Bilāl and two iqāmah.
❧"All of ʿArafah is a standing-place"
He rode to the rocks of what we now call Jabal al-Raḥmah, and did not, in all likelihood, climb it, or climbed only a little, and said وَقَفْتُ هَاهُنَا وَعَرَفَةُ كُلُّهَا مَوْقِفٌ, "I have stood here, but all of ʿArafah is a place of standing." He said the same of Minā, "I have camped here, but all of Minā is a camping ground," and of Muzdalifah, "I have spent the night here, but all of Muzdalifah is a place to spend the night", sparing the Ummah from imagining any one spot special, so that people need not exhaust themselves reaching Jabal al-Raḥmah, for anywhere in ʿArafah is exactly the same. He stood there from after Dhuhr until sunset, hands raised in unbroken duʿāʾ, hour upon hour, anyone who has made Ḥajj knows one tires in half an hour, yet he did not stop, for الْحَجُّ عَرَفَةُ, "Ḥajj is ʿArafah." When the sun's disc had wholly gone and the yellow light faded, he set out for Muzdalifah with Usāmah ibn Zayd mounted behind him, reining Qaṣwāʾ back until her head nearly touched the saddle and signalling the crowds with his hand, "gently, gently, no need to hurry, you will get there", setting the example on the most chaotic stretch of the whole Ḥajj, though no one would ever have blocked him. Asked about Maghrib on the way, he pointed ahead: الصَّلَاةُ أَمَامَكَ, "the prayer is ahead of you", at Muzdalifah, and there he prayed Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ with one adhān and two iqāmah, rested until dawn, and supplicated at al-Mashʿar al-Ḥarām facing the qiblah until the light grew bright, a sunnah most people neglect.
❧The sacrifice
He hastened before sunrise toward Minā by the middle road, came to the great Jamrah, and threw seven pebbles from the valley floor, a takbīr with each. Then at the place of sacrifice he slaughtered sixty-three camels with his own hand, one for each year of his life, for he was sixty-three, and gave the remaining thirty-seven of ʿAlī's hundred to ʿAlī to slaughter, completing the hundred. He ordered a piece taken from every one of the animals and cooked in a single pot, and ate of the meat and drank of its broth, the sunnah we keep to this day, that the meat of the uḍḥiyyah is lawful for us to eat and to distribute to the poor. Then, having prayed Dhuhr at the Kaʿbah, he came to Banū ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib who drew the water of Zamzam, and said he would gladly have drawn with them, but that, were he to do it, the people would seize it as a sunnah and crowd in to copy him, so, not to burden them, he only drank from the cup they handed him. This is the ḥadīth of Jābir ibn ʿAbdillāh, from which literally hundreds of the Ḥajj rulings are drawn.