A look back at the prophetic history behind Hajj and how it’s performed

More than a million Muslims have begun the Hajj pilgrimage by gathering in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, where the Quran was revealed to Prophet Muhammad in 610 CE.

The Hajj will end on June 16 with the sacrifice feast, a Muslim tradition, which has roots in the time when Prophet Ibrahim (Abraham) was ordered by God to sacrifice his son, Ismail. Muslims believe that Prophet Ismail is a distant ancestor of Prophet Muhammad.

In the Judeo-Christian tradition, Ibrahim’s son on the line for sacrifice was Ishaq, the father of Yaqub, the progenitor of 12 Jewish tribes.

Many rites of the Hajj pilgrimage are symbolic acts in a universal context, aiming to pay tribute to how Ibrahim, his son and his second wife, Hajar, the African mother of Ismail, submitted themselves to God’s will.

But the Hajj is also a global annual summit of the world’s Muslim communities from different social classes, races and essentially states.

Hajj is an Arabic word, which is etymologically related to the Semitic word, hag, meaning festival.

A prophetic legacy

In the Islamic context, the Hajj refers to “hitting the road to worship God in an extraordinary journey” to perform rituals, including tawaf, which means turning around the Kaaba, Islam’s most sacred site, says Dr Ekrem Keles, the former president of Türkiye’s High Board of Religious Affairs.

It is to honour the unbreakable prophetic lineage flowing from Prophets Adam to Ibrahim and to Prophet Muhammad, he says.

After having a serious religious fight with Nimrod, an advocate of polytheism, Prophet Ibrahim, a defender of monotheism, decided to move away from northern Mesopotamia, which now refers to Türkiye’s southeastern area, to a faraway land that came to be known as Mecca, Keles tells TRT World.

Prophet Ibrahim brought Hajar and Ismail, who was a baby, along to Mecca, a desolate desert at the time. As per the tradition, Prophet Ibrahim left Hajar and their child, in Mecca on their own. But before his departure, he prayed to God:

“Our Lord! I have settled some of my offspring in a barren valley, near Your Sacred House, our Lord, so that they may establish prayer. So make the hearts of ˹believing˺ people incline towards them and provide them with fruits, so perhaps they will be thankful.” (Quran, Chapter 14:37)

This Sacred House was Kaaba, which was first built by Adam, the first prophet, and later built by Prophet Ibrahim with the help of his grown-up son, Ismail, according to Islamic tradition.

“Hajj ritual clearly demonstrates that Ibrahim’s prayer is accepted by God because Muslims love to see Kaaba [the living quarters of Hajar and Ismail], and other religiously significant locations with Abrahamic legacies around Mecca and miss them a lot right after they leave these areas,” says Keles.

During the hajj, Muslims also walk around the Kaaba, between Safa and Marwah, the two hills between which a desperate Hajar ran to find water for Ismail.

“Like Hajar, now all Muslims walk back and forth in a hope to recall her heartbreaking effort to find water in the same area between Safa and Marwah, which has been called sa’ay in hajj terminology, a critical part of pilgrimage rituals,” says Keles, a former vice-president of Türkiye’s Directorate of Religious Affairs.

Eventually, thanks to God’s divine grace, Hajar, a black woman who was once a slave, discovers a water source, called the Zamzam Well. Since then, Zamzam has quench the thirst of Muslim pilgrims.

Hajj is not only an individual experience to deepen one’s commitment to religious beliefs but also a form of collective worship, says Faruk Gorgulu, an assistant professor of Tafsir (Quranic commentary) at Duzce University.

The Quran made the Hajj mandatory for Muslim adults. It is one of the tenets of the Islamic faith, like daily prayers and fasting.

Gorgulu tells TRT World that the Quran describes the Kaaba as the House of God. This means that God has hosted Muslims during their hajj, says the professor.

As a result, due to Hajj’s significant importance in Islam, Muslims need to understand its rites, their order and the way those rituals have been practiced, says the professor.

Here is a step-by-step guide to what Muslim pilgrims do during their religious journey in Mecca:

Spiritual and physical preparation

Like prior to every journey, pilgrims need to prepare themselves for Hajj both physically and spiritually, says Gorgulu. “A pilgrim should pack his/her clothes for the journey, but more importantly, he/she needs to wear the garment of piety.”

Hajj is only mandatory to Muslim adult men and women, who have the financial resources and physical strength to endure the journey.

Before pilgrims leave for the Hajj, they have to pay off their financial debts and ask forgiveness from people with whom they might have had quarrels or fights in the past, says Gorgulu.

Ihram and Talbiyah

When the Hajj journey starts, every pilgrim should enter a state of purity, called ihram, before their departure. The place from where the pilgrims depart is called Miqat, “a meeting point,” where pilgrims wear two white seamless cloths designating that they are now entering a new stage in their lives, says Gorgulu.

After pilgrims enter into the state of ihram, they should be careful about their behaviour, which requires them not to kill any animals - be it an insect or fly -, staying away from sexual contact and other actions like clipping nails and shaving any part of the body.

After entering the state of ihram, pilgrims invoke a prayer called the talbiyah, which indicates their intention for Hajj. They chant “Labbayka -Ilāhumma Labbayka,” which means “Here I am [at your service] O God, here I am.”

With the utterance of his prayer, the pilgrim has stepped into his/her hajj, says Gorgulu. He adds that until the pilgrim sees the Kaaba, he/she will continue to repeat this prayer, which is the ultimate pledge of loyalty to Allah.

Tawaf

When the pilgrims reach the Kaaba, they enter the second stage of the Hajj. They salute the House of God and immediately begin to walk around it in circles, which is called tawaf. In order to complete a tawaf, the pilgrim needs to walk around the Kaaba seven times.

Prior to every tawaf, the pilgrim needs to make an intention for it and at the beginning of each turn, he needs to salute Hajar al-Aswad, the holy Black Stone of Kaaba, says Gorgulu. “It’s a kind of salat (prayer),” he adds. The pilgrim then drinks the Zamzam water.

Sa’ay

After tawaf, pilgrims go to the area of Safa and Marwah to honour Hajar’s efforts to find water for her infant son. Sa’ay means “walking”, says Gorgulu.

According to the Quran, Safa and Marwah are the important "symbols" of God, he says. To complete a Sa’ay, the pilgrims need to walk between Safa and Marwah seven times.

When the Sa'ay ends on the hill of Marwah, pilgrims pray, turning their direction toward the Kaaba. After this prayer, pilgrims cut some of their hair.

From Umrah to Hajj

At this point, pilgrims, who do Hajj al-Tamatt'u, a common type of Hajj, leave their Ihram for a few days, which also marks the end of their Umrah, a part of the pilgrimage.

Umrah, which means a visit to the Kaaba, is the first part of Hajj al-Tamatt'u, which allows pilgrims to take a break from their state of Ihram.

During Hajj al-Qiran, a more difficult version of the pilgrimage practised by Prophet Muhammad, pilgrims continue to be in the state of Ihram without any break until the very end of their Hajj, says Gorgulu.

Until the 8th day of Dhu al-Hijjah, a month in the Islamic calendar, pilgrims continue to pray and perform the Tawaf. On this particular day, pilgrims of Hajj al-Tamatt'u again don their Ihram clothes, and this time, they demonstrate their intention to complete the Hajj by going to Mount Arafat, the most crucial part of the pilgrimage. Then, they move to Mina, an area between Mecca and Mount Arafat.

The Day of Arafah

The next day, pilgrims arrive at Arafat, a mountainous area 20 km from Mecca, to repent and contemplate.

Gorgulu says that if pilgrims do not have this contemplation period in Arafat, their pilgrimage can not be considered a real one.

Prophet Muhammad also clearly emphasised the importance of the Day of Arafah, which is one day before the first day of the Sacrifice Feast. “Hajj means to be in Arafat,” he said.

After offering noon and afternoon prayers together, pilgrims offer prayer in Arafat here, 'standing before God' (Wuquf of Arafat), which marks that they are qualified to become pilgrims, says Gorgulu. “They greet each other for the achievement.” Pilgrims should stay in Arafat until sunset, spending their time praying in a standing position. This place is also where Prophet Muhammad gave his last sermon.

After sunset, pilgrims move to Muzdalifah, an area between Arafat and Mina, to spend the night there. They collect stones for the next day’s stoning of the Devil in Mina.

Stoning Satan

Reaching Mina on the first day of the Sacrifice Feast, pilgrims perform the Stoning of the Devil by throwing seven stones toward a pillar known as Jamrat al-Aqabah. This also symbolises Prophet Ibrahim’s struggle against Satan’s temptation in regard to his son’s sacrifice.

Sacrifice Feast

After the Stoning of the Devil, pilgrims offer their animal sacrifices, which is also another symbolic act going back to Prophet Ibrahim’s difficult test. When Prophet Ibrahim was able to fulfil God’s “vision”, an animal, which was a ram in the opinion of many Muslim scholars, appeared in place of Ismail and the sacrifice was fulfilled by slaughtering it, according to the Quran.

After sacrificing their animals, pilgrims shave their hair and leave their state of Ihram.

Last tawaf

Pilgrims move back to Mecca to revisit Kaaba for their last tawaf, which is called Tawaf Ziyarat or Tawaf al-Ifadah. Like their first tawaf, they complete their seven rounds of Kaaba and move to perform Sa’ay for a second time.

With the completion of Sa’ay, the pilgrimage ends.