The Farewell Hajj, Makkah to Arafat, 10 AH

The Prophet ﷺ left Madinah on 25 Dhu al-Qa'dah, with five nights of the month left, and reached Makkah on the fourth of Dhu al-Hijjah (Sahih al-Bukhari 1545). At Dhu al-Hulayfah he entered the state of ihram, and at al-Bayda' he raised the talbiyah from his camel al-Qaswa; Jabir ibn Abd Allah ﵁ looked out over riders and people on foot as far as his eye could see (Sahih Muslim 1218). The sahih reports give no number for them.

He entered Makkah by the upper pass (Sahih al-Bukhari 1576), made the tawaf and the sa'y, and camped in the bed of the wadi in upper Makkah, near al-Hajun, until the Day of Tarwiyah. Those who had brought no sacrificial animals left the state of ihram; he kept his (Sahih Muslim 1218).

On Thursday the eighth the pilgrims went out to Mina, a valley about 5 km east of the Ka'bah. The Prophet ﷺ prayed the five prayers from Zuhr to Fajr there and waited for the sun to rise, and gave word for a tent of hair to be pitched for him at Namirah (Sahih Muslim 1218).

On the morning of the ninth he rode east past al-Mash'ar al-Haram, where Quraysh had expected him to stop as they did in the Jahiliyyah, and came to Arafat, to the tent at Namirah. When the sun had passed its height he rode down into the bed of the valley, which al-Nawawi ﵀ identifies as Uranah, just outside the boundary of Arafat as most scholars place it, and spoke to the people (Sahih Muslim 1218).

After the sermon the adhan was given, and he prayed Zuhr and 'Asr together, with an iqamah for each and nothing between them.

From the valley he rode on to the standing place at the rocks, at the foot of the small granite hill in the plain that is now called Jabal al-Rahmah, and stood there facing the qiblah until the sun had set (Sahih Muslim 1218). That Friday the verse was revealed: ‘Today I have perfected your religion for you’ (al-Ma'idah 5:3), as 'Umar ﵁ later confirmed (Sahih al-Bukhari 45).

The hill is about 65 m high above the plain and some 640 m around its foot, too small for the elevation data, which shows it as a lump of 14 m. It is therefore drawn as a separate model at its published height, with an interpretive outline, and a ring marks the foot where the rocks were, since the sources do not say on which side.

At sunset he left Arafat with Usamah ibn Zayd ﵁ riding behind him and called for calm; at a pass on the way he stopped to make a light ablution (Sahih Muslim 1218; Sahih al-Bukhari 1667). At Muzdalifah he joined Maghrib and 'Isha and slept until the dawn, and after Fajr he stood at al-Mash'ar al-Haram in supplication until the sky was bright, leaving before sunrise with al-Fadl ibn 'Abbas ﵁ behind him.

The pass is drawn at the narrowest point of the corridor that the terrain shows, a saddle measured for this model; the sources do not locate it more closely.

On Saturday the tenth he crossed Wadi Muhassir at a quicker pace, came to the jamrah by the tree and threw seven pebbles from the valley floor. He slaughtered sixty-three camels with his own hand and 'Ali ﵁ sacrificed the rest; then he rode to the House for the tawaf of ifadah and drank from Zamzam (Sahih Muslim 1218). Where he prayed Zuhr that day the reports differ: in Makkah for Jabir ﵁, at Mina for Ibn 'Umar ﵄ (Sahih Muslim 1308).

On this day he spoke to the people at Mina again.

Jami' al-Tirmidhi 2159, from 'Amr ibn al-Ahwas ﵁, also dates an address to the day of the greater Hajj, with the words that no one bears the crime of another; al-Tirmidhi ﵀ graded it hasan sahih.

For the three days of tashriq he stayed at Mina and stoned the three jamarat each day after midday (Sahih Muslim 1299), standing long in supplication after the first and the middle one (Sahih al-Bukhari 1751, 1753). In the middle of these days he addressed the people once more.

On the thirteenth he came down to al-Muhassab, prayed there and slept a little, and at the end of the night he made the farewell tawaf at the House (Sahih al-Bukhari 1756) and set out for Madinah.

Ibn Ishaq ﵀, in the recension of Ibn Hisham ﵀, gives the sermon as one address at Arafat that also holds words the hadith collections place at Mina. Two endings of the saying about what he left behind him, and one further line, are reported with other chains and other gradings; they are listed here, each with its grade, and not on the cards.

Jami' al-Tirmidhi 3786 (Jabir ﵁): ‘the Book of Allah and my family, the people of my house’. Al-Tirmidhi ﵀ called it hasan gharib.

Ibn Ishaq ﵀ and the Muwatta of Malik ﵀ (without a chain) give ‘the Book of Allah and the Sunnah of His Prophet’; al-Hakim ﵀ gives it with chains that scholars grade differently.

Ibn Ishaq ﵀ also reports, without a connected chain: ‘Whoever holds a trust, let him return it to the one who entrusted it.’

'Umar ﵁ said that the verse of al-Ma'idah was revealed at Arafat on a Friday (Sahih al-Bukhari 45). That Friday fixes the days: the ninth of Dhu al-Hijjah 10 AH fell on 6 March 632 CE, and every other weekday on this page is counted from it. The months were fixed by the sighting of the new moon, so no calendar converter decides these dates; the page gives them in the Julian calendar, which historians use for 632, and a proleptic Gregorian date would be three days later.

The sources name the days by their rites: the Day of Tarwiyah on the eighth, the Day of Arafah on the ninth, the Day of Sacrifice on the tenth, and the days of tashriq from the eleventh to the thirteenth. The departure from Madinah fell on 25 Dhu al-Qa'dah, with five nights of the month left (late February 632 CE). In the sermon at Mina he said that time had come round to its form on the day Allah ﷻ created the heavens and the earth (Sahih al-Bukhari 4406).

Every place has a coordinate from OpenStreetMap or Wikidata or, where nothing is mapped, a position estimated from a description in the sources, with its reasoning given in its block above. Where the sources name a place and it is mapped with medium or high confidence the route is solid; elsewhere it is dashed, and it passes through valley-floor points taken from the terrain. Places known only approximately carry a ring or a band.

The terrain is modern public elevation data (SRTM, flown in February 2000), sampled every 18 m and exaggerated ×1.5. Before anything was edited, the modern structures that stood in 2000 were measured: Masjid Namirah showed as a raised block of about 10 m and is levelled back to the surrounding wadi floor; the older Jamarat bridge probably shows as a ridge of about 5 to 8 m that cannot be separated from the valley walls at this resolution, and is left as it is; the road cuts cannot be undone. Jabal al-Rahmah is drawn as its own model at its published height of 65 m, never exaggerated. The buildings of Makkah come from the Makkah model of 610 to 615 CE, the same houses set on this terrain; no person, animal or tent is drawn, and nothing built after 632 CE.