The Farewell Sermon

خُطْبَةُ الْوَدَاع

The last thing he said to everyone at once

On the ninth of Dhul Hijjah in the year 10 AH the Prophet ﷺ rode into the valley at Arafah and spoke to the largest gathering of his life, about a hundred thousand pilgrims who had come to learn their Hajj from him. It was his last public address, given roughly three months before his death, and he delivered it like a man setting his house in order while there was still time.

Read this first

The text most widely shared online as ’The Last Sermon’ is a composite: several narrations of different dates and different strength, stitched into one smooth speech. Honesty requires saying so plainly. The core is beyond doubt: Sahih Muslim 1218, the long hadith of Jabir, preserves the Arafah khutbah itself, with the sanctity of blood and wealth, the abolition of the blood claims and riba of Jahiliyyah beginning with the Prophet’s ﷺ own family, the rights of and duties toward women, and holding fast to the Book of Allah. Other beloved lines are authentic but were spoken at Mina during the same pilgrimage, above all ’there is no superiority of Arab over non-Arab except by taqwa,’ which comes from a separate authentic narration in Musnad Ahmad, not from the Arafah text. A few flourishes in circulating versions have no strong chain at all. Every section below carries a label, so that what you read here stands exactly as the evidence stands.

Nothing here is smoothed over. Each passage below carries its own badge and its own sources, the sermon’s own words are given in Arabic and in English, and where a beloved line belongs to another day of that same pilgrimage, the page says so instead of borrowing it quietly.

Muslim 1218Musnad Ahmad 23489Bukhari 1741
Qur’anstated in the Book itself
Sunnahestablished in authentic hadith
Mixed evidenceparts of differing strength
Scholars differread differently by the scholars
Editorialour own counsel, never revelation

The day itself

عَرَفَة

The plain of Arafah, the ninth of Dhul Hijjah

Arafah is the standing that Hajj cannot be completed without: a single afternoon in one wide valley outside Makkah, spent in supplication until the sun goes down. In the year 10 AH the Prophet ﷺ made that standing once, at sixty three years of age, about three months before his death, and he used it to speak.

Jabal al Rahmahthe mount of mercythe belly ofthe valleyabout 100,000 standing
  • One valley, one afternoon, the ninth of Dhul Hijjah in the year 10 AH. He rode into the middle of it so that the rings of listeners could face inward from every side.
  • Criers were posted through the crowd to repeat each sentence outward, so the far rings heard the same words as the near ones.
  • It was the largest gathering of his life, and the last time he would address it: about a hundred thousand pilgrims, most of whom would never see him again.

Muslim 1218 and Bukhari 1741. Jabir ibn Abdullah, who rode with him, preserved the fullest account of that day: the camel, the valley, the sermon, and the sun going down over the standing.

The verse that came down while he stood

Qur’an

Umar ibn al Khattab was once told by a man of the Jews that a verse in the Muslims’ book was worth a festival of its own, and he named this one. Umar answered that he knew exactly where and when it came down: on the day of Arafah, on a Friday, while the Messenger of Allah ﷺ was standing in that valley.

الْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِي وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ الْإِسْلَامَ دِينًا

This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favour upon you, and approved for you Islam as religion.

Qur’anBukhari 45Muslim 3017

Passage One of nine

I May Not Meet You After This Year

Sunnah

Take your rites from me, for I do not know; perhaps I shall not perform Hajj after this Hajj of mine.

Jabir ibn Abdullah, who preserved the fullest account of that pilgrimage, describes the Prophet ﷺ riding his camel al-Qaswa into the belly of the valley and calling the people to hear him. Through those days he kept saying: ’Take your rites from me, for I do not know; perhaps I shall not perform Hajj after this Hajj of mine.’

The companions heard the farewell inside the instruction, and the journey itself came to be named Hajjat al-Wada, the Farewell Pilgrimage. So everything said at Arafah carries the weight of a man setting his house in order before the largest audience he would ever have, saying, while there was still time, what must never be forgotten.

Muslim 1218Muslim 1297

Beside it in the Book

When the help of Allah comes, and the victory, and you see people entering the religion of Allah in crowds, then glorify the praise of your Lord and ask His forgiveness. Ibn Abbas said the companions understood this surah as the announcement of the Messenger’s ﷺ approaching death.

Qur’an

Passage Two of nine

The Sanctity of Blood, Wealth and Honor

Sunnah

Indeed your blood and your wealth are sacred to you, as sacred as this day of yours, in this month of yours, in this land of yours.

He began where every narration of that day begins: ’Indeed your blood and your wealth are sacred to you, as sacred as this day of yours, in this month of yours, in this land of yours.’ His listeners measured holiness by three things above all: the day of Arafah, the month of Dhul-Hijjah, the precincts of the Haram.

He took the most inviolable things they knew and made every believer’s life and property their equal. In the khutbah at Mina days later he ﷺ joined a third term to the pair: ’your blood, your wealth, and your honor.’ Reputation, dignity, the good name of another Muslim, all fenced by the same sanctity. Whoever carries this sermon leaves it knowing that the person beside him is sacred ground.

Muslim 1218Bukhari 1741

Beside it in the Book

Whoever kills a soul, unless for a soul or for corruption in the land, it is as if he had killed all mankind; and whoever saves one, it is as if he had saved all mankind.

Qur’an

What he fenced

الْحُرُمَات

The three he made sacred

Read together, the sanctities he named at Arafah and at Mina form one fence with three bands around every believer: the life, the property, the good name. They are the sermon’s legal core, and the part of it that is quoted in courts and in khutbahs to this day.

دَمdamlifeyour blood is sacredمَالmalpropertyyour wealth is sacredعِرْضirdhonouryour good name is sacredone sanctity, in three bandsas sacred as this day, this month, this land
  • At Arafah he named two: your blood and your wealth. Days later at Mina he added the third: your honour, the good name of the person beside you.
  • He measured them against the three holiest things his listeners knew, the day of Arafah, the month of Dhul Hijjah and the precincts of the Haram, and made an ordinary believer’s life and property their equal.
  • The bands are linked on purpose. A community that keeps two of them and breaks the third has broken the sanctity itself.

Muslim 1218 and Bukhari 1741. Indeed your blood and your wealth are sacred to you, as sacred as this day of yours, in this month of yours, in this land of yours.

Passage Three of nine

Jahiliyyah Placed Beneath His Feet

Sunnah

Every matter of Jahiliyyah, the age of ignorance, is laid down beneath these two feet of mine.

Then he dismantled the old world: ’Every matter of Jahiliyyah is laid down beneath these two feet of mine.’ The blood feuds of the age of ignorance were cancelled, and he began with his own house: ’The first blood claim I abolish is our own blood, the blood of the son of Rabi’ah ibn al-Harith,’ a child of his kinsman, killed as a nursling among Banu Sa’d.

The riba of Jahiliyyah, its usury, was annulled the same way: ’The first riba I abolish is our riba, the riba of Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib; it is cancelled, all of it.’ He demanded of his own family first what he demanded of everyone, and no reform in history has begun closer to home.

Muslim 1218

Beside it in the Book

O you who believe, fear Allah and give up what remains of riba, of usury, if you are believers.

Qur’an

Passage Four of nine

The Rights of Women

Sunnah

Fear Allah concerning women, for you have taken them by the covenant of Allah.

’Fear Allah concerning women, for you have taken them by the covenant of Allah, and their companionship has been made lawful to you by the word of Allah.’ In his final public teaching, marriage is a trust sworn in the name of Allah. The duties run both ways: a wife is not to admit into the home anyone her husband dislikes, and ’their right upon you is their provision and their clothing, according to what is honorable.’

The clause permitting, after betrayal of that trust, a discipline ’without severity’ was fenced tightly by the jurists and never once practiced by the Prophet ﷺ, who struck no woman and no servant, ever. Tirmidhi’s farewell narration adds his ﷺ plain command: ’Treat women well.’

Muslim 1218Muslim 2328Tirmidhi 1163

Beside it in the Book

And live with them in kindness. For if you dislike them, perhaps you dislike a thing and Allah makes in it much good.

Qur’an

Passage Five of nine

One Body of Brothers

Sunnah

Do not return after me to being unbelievers, striking the necks of one another.

The sanctities knit the believers into a single family, and the gravest breach of them is to draw a brother’s blood. During that same pilgrimage he ﷺ told Jarir to call the people to silence, then said: ’Do not return after me to being unbelievers, striking the necks of one another.’ To kill a believer is to fall back into the darkness that had just been placed under his feet.

Property follows the same rule: he taught that nothing of a Muslim’s wealth is lawful to another except what is given with a willing soul. And his ﷺ standing definition held the rest together: ’The Muslim is the brother of the Muslim: he does not wrong him, does not forsake him, does not despise him.’

Bukhari 121Bukhari 1741Muslim 2564Musnad Ahmad

Beside it in the Book

The believers are but brothers, so make peace between your brothers, and fear Allah, that you may receive mercy.

Qur’an

Passage Six of nine

No Superiority Except by Taqwa

Scholars differ

O people, your Lord is one, and your father is one. No Arab has superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; no red over black, nor black over red, except by taqwa, the mindfulness of Allah.

The most quoted line of the famous composite does not come from the Arafah text preserved in Muslim; it comes from a khutbah during the days of Mina, on the same pilgrimage, a few days later: ’O people, your Lord is one, and your father is one. No Arab has superiority over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab; no red over black, nor black over red, except by taqwa.’

The words are authentically his ﷺ: the narration in Musnad Ahmad carries a chain graded sahih by the hadith editors of our era. It is marked debated here for placement only, because honesty requires saying that this declaration belongs to Mina, not to the Arafah sermon into which the composite stitches it.

Musnad Ahmad 23489

Beside it in the Book

O mankind, We created you from a male and a female and made you peoples and tribes so that you may know one another. Indeed the most noble of you before Allah is the most mindful of Him.

Qur’an

Passage Seven of nine

What He Left Behind: The Book of Allah

Sunnah

I have left among you that which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray: the Book of Allah.

’I have left among you that which, if you hold fast to it, you will never go astray: the Book of Allah.’ This is the wording preserved in Muslim’s account of Arafah, and it is the sermon’s center of gravity: the community was about to lose its Prophet ﷺ, never its guidance. Two related wordings deserve honest labels.

’The Book of Allah and my Sunnah’ appears in later collections through chains the scholars grade variously; it is not in the sahih Arafah text. And the ’two weighty things,’ the Book of Allah and the Prophet’s ﷺ household, is authentic in Muslim but belongs to Ghadir Khumm, on the road home after the Hajj. At Arafah itself, the anchor he named was the Book.

Muslim 1218Muslim 2408

Beside it in the Book

And hold fast, all of you together, to the rope of Allah, and do not be divided.

Qur’an

Passage Eight of nine

Let the Present Convey to the Absent

Sunnah

Let the one who is present convey it to the one who is absent.

The sermon was not meant for the valley alone. In the khutbah at Mina he ﷺ commanded: ’Let the one who is present convey it to the one who is absent, for perhaps the one present will convey it to someone who retains it better than he.’

One sentence turned a hundred thousand listeners into transmitters, and everything that followed, the memorizers, the written collections, the sciences built to test every link of every chain, unfolds from it. It also quietly includes you. Fourteen centuries of conveying were set in motion so that these words would find the absent, and the absent, that day, meant every Muslim not yet born.

Bukhari 1741Bukhari 67

Beside it in the Book

O Messenger, convey what has been revealed to you from your Lord; and if you do not, then you have not conveyed His message.

Qur’an

Passage Nine of nine

O Allah, Bear Witness

Sunnah

O Allah, bear witness. O Allah, bear witness.

He closed by handing the verdict on his own mission first to his people, then to his Lord. ’You will be asked about me. What will you say?’ They answered: ’We bear witness that you have conveyed, fulfilled, and given sincere counsel.’ Then he raised his forefinger toward the sky and turned it down toward the people, saying: ’O Allah, bear witness.

O Allah, bear witness,’ three times. A hundred thousand witnesses, and the Witness above them all. Then Bilal called the adhan, and the Prophet ﷺ prayed Zuhr and Asr joined together in the valley, and stood in supplication at Arafah until the sun set. About three months later he returned to his Lord, and the trust he confirmed that day remains conveyed.

Muslim 1218

Beside it in the Book

O Prophet, indeed We have sent you as a witness, a bringer of good tidings and a warner, and one who invites to Allah by His permission, and an illuminating lamp.

Qur’an

How it reached you

الْإِسْنَاد

The chain, from the valley to this page

Al isnad, the chain of transmission, is the machinery Islam built so that words like these could not drift. Every link is named, every named man is examined, and where the examination comes back weak the report is labelled weak and kept out of the sound collections.

1Arafah, 10 AH2a hundred thousand hear it3the companions carry it4Bukhari, Muslim, Ahmad5this pageevery link named, none of them assumed
  • One sentence in the sermon set this chain in motion: let the one who is present convey it to the one who is absent.
  • By the end of that first century the community carrying these words reached from Andalusia in the west to Sindh in the east, and a whole science grew up to test every link between the valley and the page.
  • The rings only hold if each one is named. Where a link is weak, this room says so rather than closing the ring quietly.

Bukhari 1741 and Bukhari 67. Perhaps the one who is told will retain it better than the one who heard it: the reason the sermon outlived every man in that valley.

What this means for the version you have seen

Editorial

The smooth single speech that circulates online is a stitched text, and stitching is not transmission. Some of its most quoted lines are authentic but were spoken at Mina rather than at Arafah, some are authentic from other days entirely, and a few flourishes have no strong chain at all. None of that touches the core, which stands in Sahih Muslim and Sahih Bukhari and is quoted above in full.

The honest way to carry the Farewell Sermon is the way the companions carried it: say what was said, name where it was said, and let the labels stand in the open. A sermon that survived fourteen centuries on the strength of naming its sources is not served by a version that hides them.

Muslim 1218Bukhari 1741Musnad Ahmad 23489

Where to go from here

Hajj and UmrahHe gave this on the ninth of Dhul Hijjah at Arafah, in the middle of the pilgrimage this room explains. CompanionsThe people standing in front of him that afternoon, each one with a full account. The Journey of the SoulHe told them he might not meet them after that year. This is the road he was speaking from. The Unseen and the MysteriesWhat he taught about everything they could not see, every claim badged for its evidence.

The Last Sermon room keeps being tightened: sourcing checked, wording softened, labels made plainer, wave after wave, as readers write back.

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