Farewell Hajj — The Last Sermon & Completion of Religion

By 10 AH Arabia had submitted — delegations (“wufud”) crowding Madinah week upon week, Yemen, Hadramawt, Najran’s Christians (debated in the mosque, invited to mubahalah, departing under tribute), Thaqif, Hanifah — till the Prophet ﷺ announced the Hajj he had never performed as Messenger. (The 9 AH Hajj under Abu Bakr had been the purge: Ali proclaiming on the Day of Sacrifice “no pagan shall perform Hajj after this year, none circumambulate naked” — 9:1–4 — ending fourteen centuries of idolatry at the House.) Now, in Dhul-Qadah 10 AH, Madinah emptied: upward of a hundred thousand (Jabir’s narration suggests ~114,000) converged — every companion desperate to witness, to memorise, sensing (as he kept saying) farewell: “Take your rites from me — perhaps I shall not meet you after this year.” At Dhul-Hulayfah he bathed, oiled, donned the two unstitched cloths, prayed, and raised the talbiyah that valleys echoed for miles: “Labbayk Allahumma labbayk — here I am, no partner have You…” — the same cry Ibrahim first raised over an empty valley (22:27), now answered by a sea of believers.

Jabir ibn Abdullah’s hadith in Sahih Muslim — the single most detailed ritual report in Islam — walks us mile by mile: entry to Makkah chanting, Kaaba’s threshold kissed and wept upon, tawaf (three brisk circuits, four calm), the Yamani corner and Black Stone touched, Maqam Ibrahim prayed behind, Zamzam drunk, Safa climbed to face the Kaaba (“begin with what Allah began with” — 2:158), seven courses to Marwa with the valley sprinted, then the waiting at Mina (five shortened prayers), the dawn move to Arafat. There, in Namirah’s tent then at the mount (Jabal ar-Rahmah, the little hill at Arafat’s edge — he stood at its foot, facing the Kaaba, the mountain between?), he combined Zuhr and Asr, then mounted Qaswa and delivered the sermon ~100,000 heard in relayed shouts. Its text, collated from Muslim, Tirmidhi, Abu Dawud and Ibn Hisham, is Islam’s universal declaration: praise and testimony; “your blood, property and honour are sacred as this day, this month, this city — till you meet your Lord”; “everyone is from Adam, Adam from dust — no merit of Arab over non-Arab, white over black, but by piety”; usury of Jahiliyyah abolished under his feet — “beginning with my uncle Abbas’s”; blood-revenge ended — “beginning with Ibn Rabiah’s”; “fear Allah concerning women — you took them by Allah’s covenant; their rights upon you are provision and kindness, yours upon them chastity of the bed”; “Satan has despaired of being worshipped in your land — but beware, he is pleased with what you deem trivial”; “I leave what you shall never stray from while you grip it: Allah’s Book”; “you will be asked of me — what will you say?” The thunder-answer rolled back: “We testify you conveyed, fulfilled, counselled — Allahumma naam!” He raised his forefinger skyward, lowered it to the people: “O Allah — bear witness! O Allah — bear witness! O Allah — bear witness!”

While he stood at Arafat the heavens sealed the mission: “This day I perfected for you your religion, completed My favour upon you, and approved for you Islam as religion” (5:3). The companions rejoiced — Umar wept. Asked why tears at glad tidings, he answered: “Nothing perfected but it begins to wane — this portends farewell.” He was right: eighty-one (or fewer) days of revelation remained. The Prophet � partnered? No — the Prophet ﷺ continued the rites as living exegesis: Muzdalifah’s combined Maghrib-Isha under the stars (“Muzdalifah is all a standing-place”); the great jamrah pelted after sunrise with seven hand-picked pebbles, each with Allahu Akbar; the sacrifice — sixty-three camels by his own hand (his years), Ali completing the hundred, meat feeding multitudes; the head shaved (right side to Abu Talhah first — hairs treasured by companions to this day); the untying of ihram; the farewell tawaf (“let the last of your contact with the House be circumambulation”). Every gesture became law; every law, mercy.

The return to Madinah was triumph’s quiet: delegations still arriving, Yemen’s governors instructed (Muadh dispatched with the double counsel — “the first you invite to is tawhid… beware the oppressed one’s prayer, for no veil stands between it and Allah,” Bukhari), the whole peninsula in the fold. Yet the farewell refrains multiplied: “The most beloved of my ummah to me shall be those who come after, wishing to have seen me though it cost family and wealth” (Muslim); the visits to Uhud’s martyrs and Baqi’s sleepers with salam and tears; the midnight prayer lengthening. The religion stood complete — creed, law, worship, state, family, finance, war, peace — delivered by a man who owned, at the end, one mule, his arms, and a mortgaged coat of mail (Bukhari). What remained was the seal’s own departure.

Stand therefore at Arafat each year with two million and hear it: the sermon’s clauses are not history but audit. Where blood is cheap, property plundered, honour traduced, women wronged, usury enthroned, race exalted — the Farewell Sermon stands witness against Muslims first. And where one believer forgives blood-money, honours a wife, feeds the poor from lawful earnings, and grips Book and Sunnah — there the Prophet’s ﷺ thrice-repeated “bear witness” finds its answer. The Hajj he taught “perhaps for the last time” became the ummah’s annual renewal of the covenant he sealed that Friday at Arafat.