Hajj · a Light

A pilgrim who misses this afternoon has missed the Hajj

Arafat is a flat, stony plain about twenty kilometres southeast of Makkah, with a granite hill at its edge that people call Jabal al-Rahmah. Pilgrims stand there from midday until sunset on the ninth of Dhul Hijjah, and that standing is the one rite the Hajj cannot be completed without. The Prophet ﷺ delivered the sermon of his farewell pilgrimage there in 632. A hadith reports him saying that Hajj is Arafat. The plain is empty and closed for most of the year. For a few hours it holds more than two million people, all standing outdoors in the same place at the same time, doing nothing except asking.

Plain of Arafat, near Makkah

Source · Sunan al-Tirmidhi and Sunan Abi Dawud, Books of Hajj