The journey of a lifetime, explained from the beginning

Islam is built on five things, and the fifth is Hajj to the House for whoever can find a way to it. The Qur’an states the duty in one sentence: to Allah, from the people, is a pilgrimage to the House, for whoever is able to find a way there. The verse does not say every year, and it does not say everyone. It says whoever is able, once.

The Prophet ﷺ said it plainly when a man asked whether Hajj was owed every year: had he said yes, it would have become binding every year, and Hajj is once, and whatever a person does beyond that is voluntary. So one Hajj discharges the duty of a lifetime. Everything after that is a gift you give, not a debt you pay.

The Qur’an’s condition is istita’ah, ability, and the scholars unpack it into four plain things. Your body can bear the journey. You have the money for the travel and the rites. That money is beyond what your dependents need while you are away, so nobody at home goes hungry so that you can stand at Arafah. And the road is safe enough to travel with your life and your property intact.

A report explaining the way as provision and a mount is narrated by Tirmidhi and Ibn Majah. Scholars have criticised its chains, and it is honest to say so, but the four schools agree on its meaning, and they built the same four conditions from the verse itself.

Debt is where most people’s question actually lives. The rule the schools work with is that a debt owed now, that a person could pay now, comes before a voluntary journey and before an obligation he is not yet able for. A long term debt like a mortgage that is being paid on schedule is treated differently by many scholars from a debt already due. This is exactly the kind of question to put to a scholar with your actual numbers in front of him.

A woman of the tribe of Khath’am asked the Prophet ﷺ about her father, who was old and could not sit on a mount. He told her to perform Hajj on his behalf. That is the anchor for badal al-hajj, Hajj performed on behalf of another who is permanently unable, or who has died.

One condition is well known and worth saying: the one performing it should have performed his own Hajj first. The Prophet ﷺ heard a man saying labbayk on behalf of Shubrumah, asked who Shubrumah was, and told him to perform Hajj for himself first and then for Shubrumah. The Hanafis differ, holding the Hajj still counts for the one it was intended for while the performer is blameworthy, but the safe road is the plain one.

Al-Umrah, the lesser pilgrimage, is the same visit without the days. Ihram, the sacred state you enter at a fixed boundary; tawaf, circling the House seven times; sa’i, going seven times between two small hills; and then cutting the hair, and it is done. It has no fixed date: it can be performed at any time of the year, and it takes a few hours rather than five days.

Whether Umrah is obligatory once in a life is one of the oldest live disagreements in this chapter, and it is not a small one. Those who say it is obligatory read the command to complete the Hajj and the Umrah for Allah, and a narration in which the Prophet ﷺ told Aisha that the jihad of women is Hajj and Umrah. Those who say it is a confirmed sunnah point out that the famous hadith of Jibril, which listed Islam’s obligations, named Hajj and did not name Umrah.

The Qur’an tells it as a scene. Allah settled Ibrahim at the place of the House and told him to purify it for those who circle it, and then to proclaim the pilgrimage to the people, and they will come to you on foot and on every lean camel, from every distant mountain pass. One man called out in an empty valley. Every crowd since has been the echo.

That is why the first thing you say when you enter ihram is not a request but an answer. Labbayk. Here I am. The word is a reply to a call, and the call is older than every person in the crowd around you.

The Qur’an also names what the journey is for, in a phrase easy to walk past: that they may witness benefits for themselves and mention the name of Allah on known days. Benefits, plural, and unspecified. Some of them arrive at Arafah. Some of them do not arrive for years.

Two narrations carry the whole weight of the reward. Whoever performs Hajj for Allah and does not speak obscenely nor act corruptly returns as the day his mother bore him. And: the accepted Hajj, al-Hajj al-mabrur, has no reward except Paradise.

Notice the condition sitting inside the first one. It is not the walking that returns a person clean, it is the walking without the obscenity and the quarrelling. The Qur’an says the same in the same breath as it opens the season: no obscenity, no corruption, no arguing in the Hajj.

At-Tamattu’ means the enjoyment, and the name is literal. You enter ihram for Umrah at the miqat, perform the Umrah, cut your hair, and come completely out of ihram. You wear ordinary clothes, you go back to your family, everything lawful is lawful again. Then on the eighth of Dhul Hijjah you enter ihram again, from wherever you are staying in Makkah, for Hajj.

It is the Qur’an that names this way and attaches the sacrifice to it: whoever enjoys the Umrah until the Hajj, then whatever sacrifice is easy. Whoever cannot find one fasts three days during the Hajj and seven when he returns, ten complete. The verse then adds the limit: that is for whoever’s family is not present at the Sacred Mosque.

This is what most pilgrims from outside the Haram, the sanctuary around Makkah, do, and there are two honest reasons. Flights arrive days or weeks before the eighth, and nobody can stay in ihram for two weeks without hardship. And the Prophet ﷺ, at the end of his life, ordered the companions who had not brought sacrificial animals to turn their Hajj into an Umrah and come out of ihram, and said that had he known earlier what he knew then, he would not have brought the animal.

Al-Qiran means the joining. You make one intention for Umrah and Hajj together at the miqat, and you do not come out of ihram at all between them. You stay in the two cloths from the miqat until the tenth of Dhul Hijjah. A sacrifice is due, as it is for tamattu’.

This is the way of one who brings a sacrificial animal with him, and it is what the Prophet ﷺ himself did in the Farewell Hajj according to the strongest reading of the reports, because he had driven the animals from Madinah.

The schools differ on the mechanics, and the difference is practical. Most schools hold that one tawaf and one sa’i serve for both the Umrah and the Hajj of the qarin. The Hanafis hold that he performs two tawafs and two sa’is, one set for each.

Al-Ifrad means the singling out. You enter ihram for Hajj only, perform the Hajj, and no sacrifice is due from you, because you have not joined an Umrah to it. If you wish to perform an Umrah afterwards, you do it after the Hajj is complete, entering ihram again from outside the sanctuary boundary.

This is the usual choice of the people of Makkah and those living inside the miqats, and of anyone who arrives close to the eighth. It is also the only one of the three with no hady, no sacrifice, attached to it, which is why it is sometimes chosen for reasons of cost. That is a real reason, and it is worth saying out loud that saving the cost of a sheep is not usually the best reason to choose a rite.

This is a famous four way disagreement, and every school has an argument that is not silly. Do not let anyone tell you their answer is the only one, and do not carry the argument into the camp with you.

Whichever you choose, choose it before you enter ihram, and tell your group leader, because the sacrifice, the timing of your hair cutting, and whether you repeat the sa’i all follow from it. Changing your mind afterwards is possible in some cases and costly in others.

The hady owed by the pilgrim of tamattu’ and qiran is called by the scholars a dam of shukr, a sacrifice of gratitude. It is not a penalty for a mistake. You are not being fined for resting between the two rites. You are giving thanks for having been given two acts of worship in one journey.

Whoever cannot find or afford one fasts three days during the Hajj and seven after returning home. The schools differ on when the three may be fasted: many allow them from the entry into ihram for Umrah, most prefer the seventh, eighth and ninth, and if they are missed the Hanafis and others discuss whether the days of Tashriq, the three days that follow the sacrifice, may be used. If you expect to fast rather than slaughter, settle this with a scholar before you travel, not on the ninth.

A miqat is a boundary line in space. The Prophet ﷺ appointed one for the people of each direction, and no person intending Hajj or Umrah may cross his line without being in ihram.

Dhul Hulayfah, for the people of Madinah and anyone coming through it, about four hundred and fifty kilometres out and the furthest of them, known today as Abyar Ali. Al-Juhfah, for the people of Sham, Egypt and the west, north of Makkah, with Rabigh used in its place today. Qarn al-Manazil, for the people of Najd, to the east, known today as as-Sayl al-Kabir. Yalamlam, for the people of Yemen, to the south, used also by many arriving from South and Southeast Asia. And Dhat Irq, for the people of Iraq, to the north east.

The rule he ﷺ gave with them covers everyone: they are for the people of those places, and for anyone who comes through them from other lands, for whoever intends Hajj or Umrah. Whoever lives nearer than a miqat enters ihram from where he is, until the people of Makkah enter from Makkah itself.

One honest note about the fifth, and it is a claim about grading rather than about the rite itself. On the reading of the hadith scholars, four of these are named in explicit prophetic text in Bukhari and Muslim, while Dhat Irq is reported in Bukhari as appointed by Umar for the people of Iraq when their cities were opened, with further reports raising it to the Prophet ﷺ whose chains those scholars discuss and do not all grade the same way. That assessment is theirs and we are repeating it, not making it. In practice all four schools treat Dhat Irq as the miqat of that direction.

An aircraft crosses the miqat at altitude, which the Prophet ﷺ did not describe, so the scholars applied the rule to the vertical. The overwhelming position of contemporary councils and the four schools’ own reasoning is that the boundary extends upward: you enter ihram before your aircraft passes over the line of your miqat, not after you land.

In practice this means changing into the ihram garments at home or at the airport you depart from, and making the intention and beginning the talbiyah, the pilgrim’s call, when the crew announces the miqat or roughly half an hour before landing, whichever comes first. Making the intention early is safe. Making it late is not.

Whoever crosses his miqat without ihram and then intends Hajj or Umrah must go back to the line and enter from there. If he does not go back, the four schools hold a dam, a sacrifice, is due from him, and his Hajj is still valid. Note the word intending: someone travelling to Jeddah for work, with no intention of Umrah, is not bound by the line at the moment he crosses it.

Someone already living inside the miqats, in Jeddah or Makkah, enters ihram for Hajj from where he is. For Umrah he must first go out to the boundary of the sanctuary and enter from there, which is why pilgrims are taken to at-Tan’im or al-Ji’ranah. That practice comes from the Prophet ﷺ sending Aisha out with her brother to enter ihram for Umrah from at-Tan’im.

Ihram is an intention, made in the heart, to enter the rites. The cloth is not the ihram. A man wrapped in two white sheets who has not intended anything is a man in two sheets. A man in ordinary clothes who intends Hajj at the miqat has entered ihram and is now sinning by wearing the clothes, not waiting outside the state.

The bodily preparations are sunnah, and they are these: ghusl, a full washing, which is recommended even for a woman who is menstruating or in post natal bleeding, because Asma bint Umays gave birth at Dhul Hulayfah and the Prophet ﷺ told her to wash, bind herself, and enter ihram. Then perfume on the body, not on the garments, which Aisha said she used to apply to him ﷺ before he entered ihram. Then, for a man, the two unstitched white cloths: an izar wrapped around the lower body and a rida’ over the shoulders. Then two units of prayer if it is a permitted time, then the intention as the journey begins, then the talbiyah.

For a woman there is no special garment at all. Her ihram is her ordinary modest dress, in any colour, and this needs saying because so many people assume white is required of her. What changes for her is that she does not wear the niqab, a face veil cut to the face, and does not wear gloves, because the Prophet ﷺ named those two by name.

The schools differ on whether the talbiyah is part of entering the state or a sunnah alongside it, which matters if someone forgets to say it.

This is what Ibn Umar reported as the talbiyah of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and it is the sound of the whole journey. Men raise their voices with it. Women say it audibly to themselves without raising the voice.

Say it often: when you climb, when you descend, when you meet a group of people, after every prayer, in the morning, whenever it comes to you. It stops at different points depending on your rite: for Umrah, when you begin the tawaf; for Hajj, when you throw the first pebble at Jamrat al-Aqabah, the largest of the three stone pillars at Mina, on the tenth.

These are the ones with a price attached. Removing hair from the head or body, and by agreement the cutting of nails. Applying perfume to the body or clothes, including scented soap, scented cream and scented deodorant. For a man, wearing anything stitched or shaped to a limb: shirt, trousers, underwear, socks, and covering the head with anything resting on it. For a woman, the niqab and gloves. Touching a spouse with desire. Hunting land game, or helping someone else hunt it.

The expiation for the hair, and by extension for the others in this group, is set in the Qur’an and explained by the Prophet ﷺ to Ka’b ibn Ujrah, whose head was covered in lice: fast three days, or feed six poor people, or slaughter a sheep. The one who does it out of a genuine need, an illness or an injury, pays the same expiation without sin. The one who does it deliberately without need pays it and repents.

Hunting has its own expiation, named in the Qur’an: a like animal from the livestock, judged by two just men, or the feeding of the poor, or an equivalent in fasting. Sea game stays lawful throughout. And note the boundary: buying meat that someone else lawfully slaughtered is not hunting.

There is one prohibition in a class of its own. Sexual intercourse before the first release on the tenth invalidates the Hajj itself, by the agreement of the four schools. The pilgrim must complete the rites anyway, must repeat the Hajj the following year, and owes a badanah, a camel. It is worth being honest that this ruling is built on the judgements of the Companions, chiefly Umar, Ali and Ibn Abbas, rather than on an explicit prophetic text, and that the schools accepted it as settled.

Intercourse after the first release but before tawaf al-ifadah is different: the Hajj is not invalidated, an expiation is due, and one re-enters ihram from outside the sanctuary to complete the remaining tawaf. The details differ by school and this is a scholar’s question.

At the other end of the list sit the prohibitions with no material expiation at all: arguing, quarrelling, obscene speech and sin, named in the Qur’an as the things that hollow out a Hajj from inside. There is no sheep for these. There is repentance, and there is the person you were rude to, whose forgiveness you now have to go and ask for.

Three of these come up on nearly every journey, and knowing that the schools differ will save you an argument in a tent.

First, the marriage contract. The Prophet ﷺ said the one in ihram may not marry, nor give another in marriage, nor propose. Most scholars therefore hold such a contract void with no expiation. The Hanafis hold it valid though disliked, reading the report that he ﷺ married Maymunah while in ihram.

Second, footwear. Ibn Umar reported the prohibition of the khuff, a leather sock covering the ankle, unless a man finds no sandals, in which case he cuts them below the ankles. But in the sermon at Arafah, as Ibn Abbas reports, he ﷺ said that whoever finds no sandals may wear boots, without mentioning cutting. Most schools require the cutting; the Hanbalis, and some others, take the later Arafah wording and do not.

Third, and most useful of all: what happens if you break a prohibition by accident, out of forgetfulness or not knowing. This is not a small technicality. It happens to almost everyone, usually with scented soap.

Washing, showering and swimming. Unscented soap. Changing your ihram cloths, and washing them. Wearing a watch, glasses, a ring, a hearing aid, a money belt around the waist, and a bag over the shoulder. Sheltering under an umbrella, a tent, or the roof of a bus. Covering the face for a man, in the view of the majority. Killing harmful creatures. Scratching your head gently, even if a hair or two falls without intent.

The two that trip people most often: sandals or flip flops that leave the ankle bone and the top of the foot open are fine, and a wide elastic belt with pockets is fine because it is a belt, not a garment shaped to the body. When in doubt, the test for a man is simple. Is this sewn or shaped to fit a limb, and is it being worn the way that limb’s clothing is worn.

Wash, wear the two cloths if you are a man or your ordinary modest dress if you are a woman, and at the miqat intend Umrah in your heart. Then begin the talbiyah and keep saying it all the way to Makkah.

The schools count this differently in their lists, though nothing practical changes: the Hanafis call ihram a shart, a condition of the Umrah, with tawaf as its pillar. The others count ihram itself among the pillars. Either way, without it you have not begun.

Enter with the right foot and say the du’a for entering any mosque. Then the Kaaba comes into view, and this is the moment everyone has been told to prepare a special supplication for.

Here is the honest position: no specific du’a for the first sight of the Kaaba is established in an authentic report from the Prophet ﷺ. Some scholars transmitted words for it, and their chains are weak or cut. What is established is that du’a is answered in that place. So say your own, in your own language, for the things you actually need. That is better than reciting borrowed words while thinking about nothing.

Tawaf is circling the Kaaba seven times, anticlockwise, with the House on your left. It starts at the corner of al-Hajar al-Aswad, the Black Stone, and it ends there. Every circuit is one full pass from that corner back to it. Counting matters more than speed; lose count and you build on the lower number you are certain of.

The conditions are: covering what must be covered, being inside the mosque, keeping the House on your left, staying outside the Hijr, that low curved wall, because it is part of the House itself as Aisha was told, and beginning and ending at the Stone. Purity is the one condition the schools split on, and it matters enormously for women, so it has its own note below.

At the Stone, do istilam, the greeting of the Stone: kiss it if you can reach it without harming anyone, or touch it with your hand and kiss your hand, or, and this is what almost everyone will do, face it, raise your right hand toward it and say Allahu akbar, and keep walking. At the Yamani corner, touch it with the right hand if you can, and do not kiss it and do not point at it if you cannot. Between the Yamani corner and the Black Stone, say the words the Prophet ﷺ said there, which are a verse: our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the hereafter, and protect us from the punishment of the Fire.

For men only, in a tawaf that will be followed by sa’i: ramal, walking briskly with short quick steps, in the first three circuits, and idtiba’, passing the upper cloth under the right armpit so the right shoulder is bare, for the whole tawaf. Both are sunnah, both drop away in a crowd where they would harm someone, and neither applies to women.

Nothing else in the tawaf has fixed words. There is no prescribed du’a for the first circuit or the fourth. Say what you want, recite Qur’an, remember Allah, ask for your mother.

Pray two units behind Maqam Ibrahim, the standing place of Ibrahim, if there is space, reciting al-Kafirun in the first and al-Ikhlas in the second, as Jabir described. If the area is packed, and it usually is, pray them anywhere in the mosque. Do not push through a tawaf to reach the Maqam. There is no requirement to be near it.

Then drink Zamzam, the water of the well beside the House. The Prophet ﷺ said of it that it is blessed, and that it is food that satisfies. The well known saying that the water of Zamzam is for whatever it is drunk for is narrated by Ibn Majah and Ahmad and graded acceptable by a number of scholars and criticised by others, and it is fair to tell you both. Drink, and ask.

Go out to as-Safa. The Prophet ﷺ recited, as he approached it, the verse that Safa and Marwah are among the symbols of Allah, and said: I begin with what Allah began with. So you begin at Safa, and because you begin there, you end at Marwah.

Count like this, and it is the single most common counting mistake: Safa to Marwah is one. Marwah back to Safa is two. Seven ends you at Marwah, not back at Safa. Going and returning are not one trip, they are two.

On Safa, face the Kaaba, raise your hands and say Allahu akbar three times, then: there is no god but Allah alone, with no partner; His is the dominion and His is the praise, and He is able to do all things; there is no god but Allah alone; He fulfilled His promise, aided His servant, and defeated the confederates alone. Then make du’a. Say the whole of it three times, making du’a between. Do the same on Marwah. Between the two green markers, men jog; women walk. Everything between is free: du’a, dhikr, Qur’an, whatever you carry.

Sa’i is the memory of a woman running. Hajar, alone with an infant in a valley with no water, went up one hill and then the other, seven times, looking for help. Allah did not merely answer her; He wrote her panic into the pilgrimage of every person who would ever come, so that no one performs this Hajj without walking her path.

Al-halq is shaving the head. At-taqsir is shortening it. For men, shaving is clearly better: the Prophet ﷺ asked Allah to have mercy on those who shave, three times, and only then added those who shorten. If you are performing tamattu’ and will shave again after the Hajj, many scholars advise shortening now and shaving on the tenth, so that there is hair to shave.

For women it is taqsir only. She gathers her hair and cuts about a fingertip’s length from the end, from each braid or from the hair as a whole. Women do not shave, as the Prophet ﷺ stated.

The moment your hair is cut, the Umrah is over. Everything forbidden by ihram is lawful again, including your spouse. Take the cloths off. Rest. Drink something cold. If you are performing tamattu’, you will do all of this again in a few days.

Rukn, pillar: the act is part of the thing itself. If you omit it, you have not performed the Hajj, and you remain in ihram until you perform it or the Hajj is written off and made up. Money cannot buy it back.

Wajib, obligation: the act is commanded but is not part of the essence. Omit it and the Hajj is valid, and a dam is due: a sheep or a goat, or a seventh of a camel or a cow, slaughtered in the sanctuary and given to its poor.

Sunnah: the Prophet ﷺ did it or encouraged it. Omitting it costs nothing but loses something. Most of what makes the Hajj beautiful lives here.

One warning about the word dam. It literally means blood, and in these books it means a sacrifice, not a fine paid to anyone. It is meat for the poor of the sanctuary.

Aisha entered ihram for Umrah and began menstruating before reaching Makkah. The Prophet ﷺ came in and found her weeping. He said: this is a thing Allah has decreed upon the daughters of Adam. Do what the pilgrim does, except do not perform tawaf around the House until you become pure.

Read the exception carefully, because everything hangs on it. She does what the pilgrim does. She enters ihram, she says the talbiyah, she stands at Arafah, she stays at Muzdalifah, she stones the pillars, her sacrifice is made, she cuts her hair, she is in the Hajj entirely. One act is paused: tawaf. And with it, since sa’i follows a valid tawaf, the sa’i waits too.

So a woman who begins to bleed on the seventh of Dhul Hijjah loses nothing of the Hajj. She performs tawaf al-ifadah when she becomes pure, even if that is on the twelfth or later, and she is excused the farewell tawaf entirely.

She should still make ghusl at the miqat, as Asma bint Umays was told to do after giving birth at Dhul Hulayfah. The washing is for the state of ihram, not for purity from bleeding.

Tawaf al-ifadah is a pillar. It cannot be skipped, it cannot be bought off, and until it is performed she is still in ihram, which means her husband remains unlawful to her. And modern travel puts a fixed departure date on a body that keeps its own calendar. This is the genuinely difficult problem of this section, and it deserves an honest answer rather than a comfortable one.

The classical majority is firm: purity is a condition of tawaf, so she waits, even if it costs her the flight. Groups have historically kept a woman behind with a mahram until she became pure.

A second position, argued by Ibn Taymiyyah and adopted by a number of contemporary scholars and fatwa councils for cases of real necessity, holds that a woman in this position may perform tawaf al-ifadah while menstruating, taking precautions, because the requirement of purity for tawaf is not established by an explicit text of the same strength as the obligation itself, and because the alternative places on her a hardship the law does not impose. Some who permit it require a sacrifice with it and some do not.

Do not decide this from a page. Decide it with a scholar who can hear the actual circumstances. But go knowing that the question has an answer and that scholars have thought about you.

There is no special ihram garment for a woman. She wears her ordinary modest clothing, in any colour she likes, and there is no requirement of white. What is prohibited to her specifically is the niqab, a veil cut and fitted to the face, and gloves, because those two were named. Her face and hands are otherwise uncovered in ihram, which is the point of naming them.

She may still lower a loose cloth from her head over her face when men are passing, which is what Aisha described the women doing on the journey. The schools differ over whether that cloth may rest against the face: the Hanafis hold it should be kept off it, by a stiffened edge or a cap, and others permit contact.

For the hair, taqsir only. She takes about a fingertip’s length from the ends, gathering the hair or taking from each braid. Women do not shave.

She may not pray or fast while menstruating, and she does not make up the prayers. She may make du’a, say dhikr, say the talbiyah, recite from memory according to many scholars, carry her supplication list, and stand at Arafah for the whole afternoon with her hands raised. None of that is closed to her, and Arafah is not a prayer.

A mahram is a man a woman can never marry: her father, son, brother, uncle, grandfather, father in law, and her husband is counted with them. The Prophet ﷺ said a woman should not travel except with a mahram, and in one narration a man said his wife had set out for Hajj and he was enlisted for an expedition, and he was told to go and perform Hajj with his wife.

Whether that makes a mahram a condition of the obligation of Hajj on a woman is one of the genuinely old disagreements, and both sides argue from evidence.

Two honest additions. First, the rules on the ground have changed: for several years now the authorities have permitted women to register for Hajj in a group of women without a mahram, which is a visa rule and not a fatwa, and it does not settle the fiqh question either way. Second, both sides of this disagreement are asking the same thing underneath: is she safe. Answer that question first, honestly, and then ask which school you are following.

Medication to delay a period is permitted by the great majority of contemporary scholars if a doctor says it is safe for her, and many women use it for exactly this journey. Start it well before travelling, not the week you fly, and expect it to be unreliable if you begin late.

In tawaf, stay in the outer rings. The reward is not in the metre. Umm Salamah performed tawaf riding, behind the people, on the Prophet’s ﷺ instruction, because she was unwell. There is nothing pious about being crushed.

Pack for the reality: unscented wipes, extra underwear, painkillers you already know you tolerate, a long light overhead garment that covers without heat, and shoes you have already walked twenty kilometres in.

And take this: your Hajj is not lesser. There is not a men’s Hajj and a women’s Hajj. The same standing, the same day, the same forgiveness, on a plain where nobody can tell who anyone is.

Leaving an obligation costs a dam, a sacrifice: a sheep or a goat, or a seventh share of a camel or a cow, slaughtered inside the sanctuary and given to its poor. Your group can arrange it, and in Makkah so can any of the licensed offices.

Breaking a prohibition of ihram costs a fidyah: fasting three days, or feeding six poor people, or slaughtering a sheep, your choice of the three.

Sins of speech and temper cost repentance, and an apology to the person.

Missing the standing at Arafah cannot be repaired, and it is the only one.

And the instruction that outranks this whole page: ask a scholar on site. Every group has one. The Haram has fatwa desks. Do not guess, do not act on what the man in the next bunk told you, and do not let embarrassment stop you, because the people answering these questions have heard everything, every year, for their whole lives.

If dawn on the tenth arrives and you were not at Arafah at any point in the window, the Hajj is missed. The scholars call this fawat al-Hajj, and they set out what happens next rather than leaving a person stranded.

You come out of ihram by performing the acts of an Umrah: tawaf, sa’i, and cutting the hair. A sacrifice is due. And you make up the Hajj the following year. That is the position of the four schools, taken from the rulings of Umar and other companions on people this happened to.

It is worth knowing why the schools require the make up even when the Hajj was voluntary: the Qur’an commands the completion of the Hajj and the Umrah once entered, so entering voluntarily makes finishing binding.

If you are physically stopped from completing the rites, by a closed border, an illness that makes movement impossible, an arrest, an accident, the Qur’an addresses you directly: if you are prevented, then whatever sacrifice is easy. You slaughter where you are held, cut your hair, and come out of ihram.

There is a sunnah worth using before you ever leave home. Duba’ah bint az-Zubayr was ill and afraid she could not complete the journey. The Prophet ﷺ told her to perform Hajj and to stipulate a condition: O Allah, my place of release is wherever You hold me back. Whoever makes that condition at the moment of entering ihram, and is then genuinely prevented, comes out of ihram with no sacrifice due at all.

If you are elderly, unwell, or travelling with a condition that could stop you, say those words when you enter ihram. It costs nothing and it can save you a great deal. The Shafi’is and Hanbalis act on it fully; the Hanafis and Malikis do not give the condition the same effect.

The commonest version of this: you used the hotel’s scented soap, or a scented deodorant, or put on a shirt half asleep on a bus at four in the morning. The moment you realise, stop. Wash it off, take it off. Do not carry on because you have already ruined it, because you have not.

Whether an expiation is then due depends on the school, and this is one of the differences most worth carrying with you, because it decides whether you owe anything at all.

Under all four, a prohibition broken out of genuine need, an injury requiring a bandage, an illness requiring the head to be shaved, is permitted and carries the expiation without any sin, exactly as the Qur’an says of the one with an ailment of the head.

Lost count in tawaf or sa’i: build on the smaller number you are certain of, and complete. Uncertainty in worship is settled by certainty, the way it is in prayer.

Missed a whole day’s stoning: most scholars have you make it up on the following day, throwing the missed day’s pebbles first and then that day’s, in order. Missing all of it until the days are over costs a sacrifice. Missing one or two pebbles is treated more lightly and the schools differ on the amount of charity due.

Could not reach the pillars at all through illness, disability, pregnancy or crowd danger: appoint someone. He throws his own seven first, then yours, at each pillar. This is agreed and it is not a lesser Hajj.

Left Mina early, or missed a night: this is where the difference between the schools actually saves people, since the Hanafis do not attach a sacrifice to the nights at Mina at all. Ask your group’s scholar which view they act on before you pay for a sheep you may not owe.

Crying. Losing your temper and regretting it. Being unable to finish a du’a. Falling asleep at Arafah. Forgetting the words on Safa. Feeling nothing at all when you first see the Kaaba, while the person next to you weeps.

None of these are in any book of expiations, because none of them are defects. The Hajj is made of acts, and the acts were performed. What you felt while performing them is between you and Allah and is not always available on demand.

The sins of the tongue are different: they cost repentance, and where a person was hurt, they cost an apology. The Qur’an names them right at the start of the season for a reason.

Kissing al-Hajar al-Aswad is a sunnah. Elbowing a seventy year old woman out of the way to do it is a sin. A sunnah does not sit on top of a wrong, and no scholar in any school has ever said otherwise.

Umar walked up to the Stone and said: I know that you are a stone, you neither harm nor benefit, and were it not that I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ kissing you, I would not kiss you. It is reported that the Prophet ﷺ told Umar, who was strong, not to crowd at the Stone because he would harm the weak, and to face it and say the takbir if he could not reach it.

So: if there is space, kiss it. If not, raise your hand toward it, say Allahu akbar, and keep walking. You have done the sunnah. The version of this journey where you touch every stone and hurt three people is worth less than the version where you touch none.

Books are sold at every gate with a different supplication printed for each circuit of tawaf, and for each stretch of the sa’i. Nothing of the sort is established from the Prophet ﷺ. The only fixed words inside tawaf are the takbir at the Stone and the verse said between the Yamani corner and the Black Stone.

Two things go wrong when a person reads from a card. He spends the tawaf watching the page instead of asking for anything he wants, and he is thrown into a panic when he loses his place. Say what is in you. In your own language. That is not a lesser tawaf, it is the tawaf.

There is no harm in someone reciting a printed du’a because it helps him. The mistake is believing it is required, and correcting others who do not have one.

The kiswah, the black cloth over the Kaaba, is replaced every year. Wiping it over your face, rubbing your children against it, tying threads to it or pressing your body against the walls and the corners for blessing has no basis in what the Prophet ﷺ or his companions did. Nor does touching the Maqam of Ibrahim, or the Yamani corner with the lips, or the other two corners at all.

Two things only were touched in the House: the Black Stone, kissed or touched, and the Yamani corner, touched with the hand. His companions were precise about this because they understood that in worship, adding is not loving more.

Standing at the multazam, the space between the Stone and the door, and making du’a there is reported of Ibn Abbas and some of the early generations, and a number of scholars permit it. It is also a place where people are routinely crushed. Know that it is a matter with some room in it, and that no one is required to reach it.

People throw with rage. They shout. They throw shoes, umbrellas, water bottles, whole sandals, and every year someone throws a large stone that opens a stranger’s head, because they have been told they are stoning devils and they mean it.

There is no devil standing at the pillars. The pillars mark places, and the throwing is an act of obedience and remembrance. A report from Aisha states that the circling of the House, the going between Safa and Marwah, and the throwing of the pebbles were only established for the remembrance of Allah. Scholars have graded that report differently, and it is honest to say so, and its meaning is what every school teaches about these rites.

Throw seven small pebbles, the size of a chickpea, one at a time, saying Allahu akbar with each. The Prophet ﷺ held up such pebbles and said: with the like of these, throw. And in the same breath he warned against exaggeration in religion, and said that exaggeration is what destroyed the peoples before us. He said that at the Jamarat, on that morning, holding stones the size of beans.

The commonest way to waste a Hajj is to spend everything before the ninth. Repeated Umrahs from at-Tan’im every other day. Night prayer until Fajr for a week. Shopping until midnight. Walking twenty kilometres a day in the sun in early Dhul Hijjah. Then Arafah arrives and the person sleeps through the afternoon of his life, or sits with a migraine unable to form a sentence.

Treat the days before as training and rest, not as the event. Drink water constantly, sleep in the afternoons, take your prayers in your room when the mosque is a forty minute walk in forty five degree heat, and let the extra Umrahs go. There is no established sunnah of repeating Umrah again and again in one journey; Aisha’s Umrah from at-Tan’im was a consolation for one that her period had interrupted.

Arrive at Arafah with something left. That is the whole strategy of the Hajj.

A man can be meticulous about ramal in the first three circuits and shove a stranger out of a queue for water an hour later. Everyone has seen it. Some of us have been it.

The Hajj is a rare place where every single interaction is with someone tired, hot, frightened, far from home and speaking another language. Feeding people, giving up a place, carrying a bag, being gentle in speech: when the Prophet ﷺ was asked what makes a Hajj accepted, the answer reported from him is feeding others and speaking well.

And know the boundary of what the journey erases. The Hajj wipes what is between a person and his Lord. It does not wipe what is owed to people: money you took, a reputation you damaged, a family member you cut off. The bankrupt of this ummah, he ﷺ said, is the one who comes with prayers and fasting and charity, and also with having insulted this one and struck that one, and his good deeds are handed over until they run out.

Settle it before you go, if you can. And if you cannot, go, and settle it when you return.

The Qur’an gives the packing instruction in the middle of the Hajj verses, and the whole sentence is worth memorising: take provision, and indeed the best provision is taqwa, being mindful of Allah. Commentators say it was revealed about people who set out for Hajj with no food, calling themselves reliant on Allah, and then begged from the pilgrims.

So the two halves belong together. Pack properly, because arriving as a burden on other people is not piety. And know that the sandals and the sachets are not what you are actually carrying there.

A man in ihram is dressed in two unstitched white sheets. He will be dressed in something very similar once more, and he will not be putting it on himself.

That is not a morbid thought, it is the design. In the two cloths there is no way to tell a surgeon from a driver, a citizen of one country from a refugee of another, a man with three properties from a man with three shirts. Every marker a person spends his life assembling is taken off at a line in the desert. What is left standing on the plain at Arafah is the thing that will be raised, which is all any of us ever were.

People say the Hajj is a rehearsal for the Day of Standing. It is more exact than that. It is the same posture, the same clothing, the same crowd, the same helplessness, the same asking. The difference is that this time you chose to come, and you can still ask.

Whoever performs Hajj for Allah and does not speak obscenely nor act corruptly returns as the day his mother bore him. Sit with that sentence. Not forgiven a little. Not improved. Returned to the state of a newborn, who has never done anything at all.

A newborn has no history. That is the gift, and it is also the difficulty: a person returns with a clean page and immediately has to decide what to write on it. The scholars said the sign of an accepted Hajj is not what you felt at Arafah but what changed afterwards, and they said it because they had watched people come back unchanged.

So the last question of this room is a plain one. If Allah has just given you a page with nothing on it, what is the first thing you intend to put there.

The Qur’an ends the Hajj passage by telling the pilgrims to remember Allah the way they used to remember their forefathers, or more intensely, and then it divides people by what they ask for: some say our Lord, give us in this world, and they have no share in the hereafter; and others say our Lord, give us good in this world and good in the hereafter, and protect us from the punishment of the Fire.

Then, immediately, the very next verses turn to ordinary life: the days of Tashriq, the person whose speech about worldly life impresses you while his heart is at war, the one who sells himself seeking the pleasure of Allah. The Book moves from the plain of Arafah back to the street without pausing, because that was always where this was going.

You will land at an airport. Someone will be late to collect you. Within a week there will be a queue, a bill, a rude message. That week is the Hajj too. It is where the standing gets spent, or does not.