The Farewell Pilgrimage

In the tenth year, the Prophet ﷺ led the believers in the pilgrimage, the only complete Hajj of his life, and over a hundred thousand came with him, so many that the one who narrated it could not see where the crowd ended. He taught them the rites of Hajj as we perform them to this day, saying: take from me your rituals, for I do not know whether I will meet you after this year. The community sensed it was a farewell.

On the ninth day, standing on his camel on the plain of Arafah, he delivered the sermon that is the testament of his mission. He abolished the structures of the old world in a few sentences: O people, your Lord is one and your father Adam (as) is one; no Arab is superior to a non-Arab, nor white to black, except by piety. He declared the sanctity that underpins all society: your blood, your property, and your honour are sacred to one another, like the sanctity of this day, this month, this land.

He buried the feuds and usury of the age of ignorance under his own feet: every claim of the days of ignorance is abolished; the blood-debts of that age are abolished, and the first I abolish is the blood of my own family. He charged them concerning women: fear Allah regarding women, for you have taken them as a trust from Allah. He warned against extremism in religion, against ever returning to disbelief striking one another's necks, and he left them the rope that would never fail: I have left among you that which, if you hold to it, you will never go astray, the Book of Allah.

Again and again he asked the vast crowd: have I conveyed the message? And the roar came back: yes. And he raised his finger to the sky and lowered it to them: O Allah, bear witness. O Allah, bear witness. O Allah, bear witness.

And there, on that plain, the verse descended that completed the mission of all the prophets: this day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favour upon you, and approved for you Islam as religion. When Umar (ra) heard it he wept, for he understood what perfection of a thing means: that it is finished. The religion was complete. The work of twenty-three years, from a trembling man in a cave to a hundred thousand on a plain, was done.