In the tenth year after the Hijrah the Prophet ﷺ announced that he would perform the Hajj. The word spread across the Arabian Peninsula and people streamed from every direction to Madinah. There were more than a hundred thousand of them. Some accounts speak of a hundred and forty-four thousand. They came from Yemen and Najd, from the coastal towns and the deserts, tribes that had fought one another for years now marching together behind a single man. None of them knew that it would be the last Hajj of the Prophet ﷺ. But the Prophet ﷺ knew.
The Journey to Makkah
The Prophet ﷺ set out from Madinah on the fifth day of Dhu al-Qi’dah. He put on his ihram at Dhu al-Hulayfah and called out the talbiyah. Hundreds of thousands of voices followed him.
It was the same route he had ridden six years earlier, when the Quraysh had stopped him at Hudaybiyya and his Companions ﵃ had wept in helplessness. Now he rode that same road as master of the Holy City, with a community behind him that in twelve years had grown from a handful of persecuted men in Makkah into a state that had reached the borders of Byzantium.
On arriving in Makkah he performed the tawaf, the sa’i between Safa and Marwah and all the rites of the Hajj with a precision and attentiveness that the Companions ﵃ carefully noted and remembered. He told them:
Prophet ﷺ: Take from me your Hajj rituals. Perhaps after this year I shall not perform the Hajj again.
On the ninth day of Dhu al-Hijjah he stood on the plain of Arafat. It was midday. The sun was burning. Hundreds of thousands of people stood around him on the same plain where Ibrahim ﵇ had stood, where the rites of the Hajj had their origin. The Prophet ﷺ mounted his camel al-Qaswa and spoke.
The Sermon
What he said was not long. It was not elaborate. It was not the work of an orator seeking to impress. It was the summary of a mission, spoken by a man who knew that his time was almost up, before a multitude that would remember it for the rest of their lives.
Prophet ﷺ: O people, listen to my words. I do not know whether after this year I shall ever again stand among you in this place.
O people, your blood and your property are sacred to one another, as this day is sacred, in this month, in this city. You will meet Allah ﷻ and He will ask you about your deeds. Have I conveyed it? O Allah, bear witness.
Whoever has been given something in trust, let him return it to the one who entrusted it to him.
The riba of the Jahiliyyah is abolished. The first riba I abolish is that of Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib.
The blood-vengeance of the Jahiliyyah is abolished. The first case of blood-vengeance I abolish is that of our own blood, the blood of Ibn Rabi’ah ibn al-Harith.
O people, the Shaytan has given up hope of ever being worshipped again on this land, but he is content to be obeyed in small matters that you regard as trivial. Beware of him in your religion.
O people, time has come full circle and returned to how it was on the day Allah ﷻ created the heavens and the earth.
O people, your women have rights over you and you have rights over them. Treat the women well, for they are with you as captives. You have received them as an amanah from Allah ﷻ.
I leave with you that which, if you hold fast to it, will never let you go astray: the Book of Allah ﷻ and the Sunnah of His Prophet.
O people, there is no prophet after me and no community after you.
O people, your Lord is one. An Arab has no precedence over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab. A red one has no precedence over a black one, nor a black one over a red, except by taqwa. Have I conveyed it?
Companions ﵃: Yes, O Messenger of Allah.
Prophet ﷺ: Let him who is present convey it to him who is absent. Have I conveyed it? O Allah, bear witness.
Then the revelation came down that brought the mission to its completion.
ٱلۡيَوۡمَ أَكۡمَلۡتُ لَكُمۡ دِينَكُمۡ وَأَتۡمَمۡتُ عَلَيۡكُمۡ نِعۡمَتِي وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ ٱلۡإِسۡلَٰمَ دِينٗاۚ
This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favour upon you and have approved for you Islam as your religion.
Surah Al-Ma’idah: 3
Umar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ wept when the verse came down. Someone asked him why.
Umar ibn al-Khattab ﵁: After completion comes only diminution.
He was right. It was a completion. And completion meant that the end was near.
The Return and the Illness
The Prophet ﷺ returned to Madinah. In the month of Safar of the eleventh year after the Hijrah he began to show signs of illness. Headaches, fever, weakness. He continued to lead the prayers as long as he could. When he became too weak to walk to the mosque, he instructed Abu Bakr ﵁ to lead the prayers.
In his last days he left his room only once, to address the community. He was supported by Ali ﵁ and al-Fadl ibn Abbas ﵁; his feet almost dragged along the ground. He sat on the minbar and spoke.
Prophet ﷺ: O people, the fire is kindled and the fitnah comes like pieces of the dark night. By Allah, you can hold nothing against me. I have only declared lawful what Allah ﷻ has permitted me, and I have only declared unlawful what Allah ﷻ has forbidden.
O people, whoever I have wronged, here I am. Let him take his right from me. Whoever’s honour I have offended, here is my honour, let him take his right. Whoever’s property I have taken, here is my property, let him take his right. And let no one say that he fears the anger of the Prophet. Know that anger is not my nature.
A man stood up and said that he was owed three dirhams by the Prophet ﷺ. The Prophet ﷺ had it paid at once.
Prophet ﷺ: A disgrace in this world is lighter than a disgrace in the Hereafter.
The Final Days
In the last days of his illness the Prophet ﷺ asked his wives whether he might stay in the room of Aishah ﵂. They consented. He died in her room, with his head on her lap, on the twelfth day of Rabi al-Awwal of the eleventh year after the Hijrah.
Aishah ﵂ related his last words.
Prophet ﷺ: (While he dipped his hand in a bowl of water and wiped his face) La ilaha illallah. Indeed, death has its agonies.
(His final words, as his head grew heavy)
Prophet ﷺ: With the highest companion. With the highest companion. With the highest companion.
His hand fell. He was sixty-three years old.
Umar ibn al-Khattab ﵁ could not believe it. He stood outside the mosque and cried out that whoever said the Prophet ﷺ had died would be killed, for he had merely gone away as Musa ﵇ had gone away, and would return.
Abu Bakr al-Siddiq ﵁ entered, bent over the body of the Prophet ﷺ, kissed his forehead and spoke.
Abu Bakr al-Siddiq ﵁: My father be your ransom and my mother. You were pure in life and pure in death. By Allah, Allah ﷻ will never let you taste two deaths.
(He went out and addressed the community)
Abu Bakr al-Siddiq ﵁: O people, whoever worshipped Muhammad ﷺ, Muhammad ﷺ has died. Whoever worshipped Allah ﷻ, Allah ﷻ is alive and does not die.
(He recited)
وَمَا مُحَمَّدٌ إِلَّا رَسُولٞ قَدۡ خَلَتۡ مِن قَبۡلِهِ ٱلرُّسُلُۚ
And Muhammad is no more than a Messenger; messengers have already passed away before him.
(Umar ﵁ heard the verse and his knees gave way beneath him)
What He Left Behind
He was born an orphan in a city that trampled the weak and exalted the strong. He grew up without a father, without a mother, without the protection that other children took for granted. He began his mission at the age of forty, without an army, without money, without political power, in a society that mocked him and then sought to destroy him.
In twenty-two years he changed the Arabian Peninsula so thoroughly that the society he found and the society he left behind scarcely resembled one another. The slave trade that crushed human lives was curtailed and the humanity of the slave anchored in law. The woman who had been regarded as a burden, whose birth some tribes mourned with the live burial of the infant girl, gained inheritance rights, the right to her own bridal gift, and protection against arbitrary repudiation. The blood-vengeance that bound generations to one another in endless cycles of violence was replaced by a legal system that placed proportionality and forgiveness at its centre. The arrogance of tribe and lineage that stratified Arab society and kept the weak permanently outside was abolished in the Farewell Sermon with a single sentence: no Arab has precedence over a non-Arab except by taqwa.
He died as he had lived. His armour was pawned with a Jewish man for barley to feed his family. There was no state treasury, no palace, no inheritance of gold or silver. Aishah ﵂ related that on the day of his death there was no oil in the house with which to light a lamp.
A man who wished to rule would have done it differently. A man who wished to be glorified would have done it differently. A man who placed his own interests at the centre would have done it differently. Whoever studies the life of Muhammad ﷺ from his birth to his death, whoever looks at what he gave up and what he refused to take, whoever listens to what his enemies said about him, the neighbour who washed his shoulders after her death, Heraclius who told his courtiers that this was the prophet whose time had come, Abu Sufyan who after decades of enmity admitted that he had never heard a lie from him, that man must explain something. Either he was the most consistent and most self-denying impostor that humanity has ever produced, a man who lived his whole life in poverty for a lie when he could have had it otherwise. Or he was what he said he was.
لَقَدۡ جَآءَكُمۡ رَسُولٞ مِّنۡ أَنفُسِكُمۡ عَزِيزٌ عَلَيۡهِ مَا عَنِتُّمۡ حَرِيصٌ عَلَيۡكُم بِٱلۡمُؤۡمِنِينَ رَءُوفٞ رَّحِيمٞ
There has come to you a Messenger from among yourselves; grievous to him is what afflicts you, he is concerned for you, and to the believers he is kind and merciful.
Surah At-Tawbah: 128
He is gone. The mission is complete. What he had been commanded to convey he has conveyed, fully and without hidden agenda, without keeping anything for himself and without leaving anything unsaid that his community needed. On the plain of Arafat, before hundreds of thousands of people, he had asked: have I conveyed it? And the multitude had answered: yes. And he had said: O Allah, bear witness.
Allah ﷻ bore witness. And the mission was fulfilled.
His Companions ﵃ remained behind with an emptiness that no words could fill. But they did not stand still. They spread across the earth, from al-Andalus to the borders of China, from the coasts of East Africa to the heart of Central Asia, and they carried with them what he had given them. Not as an inheritance to be kept in a chest, but as a living reality they had borne in their own bodies, in their prayers, their trade, their judgements, their dealings with the weak and the powerful. Allah ﷻ was pleased with them, as He had declared on the day of the bay’at al-ridwan, and they had made good that pleasure with their lives.
After them came the salaf al-salih, the pious predecessors, who followed the example of the Companions ﵃ with a precision that made them the standard for every generation that came after them. The Prophet ﷺ had spoken of them before they came.
Prophet ﷺ: The best of people are my generation, then those who follow them, then those who follow them.
They knew the facts of the Seerah as we have now read them. But it did not stop at knowledge. The knowledge moved them. They stood up. They acted. They sacrificed. Not because the world invited them to it, but because they understood that the pleasure of Allah ﷻ is not earned by knowing names and dates but by living according to what those names and dates mean. And now the same question lies before us.
We have read the Seerah. We know the trench and the letters to the kings, the tears of Umar ﵁ at hearing the verse of completion, the honesty of Ka’b ibn Malik ﵁ on the day a lie could have spared him everything, the calm of the Prophet ﷺ on his deathbed with his head on the lap of Aishah ﵂, his lips speaking of the highest companion. We know all of this now. But what shall we do with it?
The Companions ﵃ did not read the Quran in order to know it. They read it in order to act on it. They did not study the Seerah to gather facts. They studied it to understand how a person lives who has Allah ﷻ as his only goal. The salaf al-salih built upon that foundation and left behind a legacy of knowledge, justice and god-fearing piety that to this day is the standard for whoever seeks the pleasure of Allah ﷻ.
That pleasure is not earned by reading the Seerah-map and closing the page. It is earned by standing up. By praying as he ﷺ prayed. By being honest as he ﷺ was honest. By standing up for the weak as he ﷺ stood up for the weak. By going out into the world with what he ﷺ has left behind and conveying it to whoever has not yet received it, exactly as he ﷺ asked on Arafat: let him who is present convey it to him who is absent.
His mission is fulfilled. Ours has begun.
اللهم صل على محمد وعلى آل محمد كما صليت على إبراهيم وعلى آل إبراهيم إنك حميد مجيد، وبارك على محمد وعلى آل محمد كما باركت على إبراهيم وعلى آل إبراهيم إنك حميد مجيد