Muhammad’s health appeared to be good for his age. We’re uncertain of all numbers, but he was somewhere in his early 60s, which in the 7th century could be very old and aged. In his case, the stories say that his hair was only a bit gray and he still worked and rode without tiring. There was every reason to think he would live another ten or twenty years, but he himself sensed that he would not.
When the time came for the traditional pilgrimage to Mecca, the Hajj, Muhammad decided to lead the expedition. It was the first time since Mecca’s pilgrimage was founded that it would be entirely Muslim, with no idolatry. All of Arabia was now monotheistic. So when the word of mouth got out that the Prophet himself was going, thousands of Bedouin and people in Arabian towns decided to go, too. They gathered around Medina so that they could accompany the Prophet on each step.
It was like one of his major war expeditions, reported to number as much as 30,000. The procession would have been even larger than we imagine, since Muhammad brought 100 camels to sacrifice, and many others probably did as well. They were all wearing the pilgrim’s style, which consisted of two pieces of cloth with no stitching, only held on by a belt or over the shoulder: in other words, a primitive covering.
The Prophet brought all of his wives, each in a howdah on a camel. Abu Bakr had recently married the widow of Jafar (who died leading the Syrian expedition), and she was pregnant. At the first day’s halt, she went into labor and gave birth to a son, who was named Muhammad. (It’s interesting that the name was not really very common up to this point.) Muhammad ibn Abu Bakr comes into later stories.
Muhammad’s actions on this last Hajj set the norms for what pilgrims do when they go to Mecca. He began by going around the Ka’aba seven times, then prayed at the “Station of Abraham,” a smaller stone that is now encased in a gold-plated metal housing. He went from the hill of Safa to the hill of Marwa seven times also. Every prayer that he spoke at one of these points was noted in their memory so they could do the same the following year. (In the modern Hajj ritual, there is an underground passage between Safa and Marwa so that people can pass back and forth without stopping surface traffic.) Muhammad entered the Ka’aba, but A’isha reports that when he visited her in the evening, he said he regretted doing so. Not everyone would be able to do it, in fact maybe at times in the future nobody could go in, and the commandment was really just to go around it.
His expedition stayed in tents outside the city, although many relatives and new converts begged him to be a guest. Muhammad seems to have been very conscious of everything he did as setting a precedent. Indeed, modern Hajjis stay in tents in the same valley. On the second day, he rode to the valley of Arafah, to a hill called the Mount of Mercy, where he prayed. This was significant because it was part of the ancient pilgrimage ritual, but his Quraysh tribe had given it up. He told them it was first done by Abraham, so it was back on the program. On the same day, he also sent out a crier on horseback to ride through all of the vast encampment and remind them all that it was the holy month and nobody should shed any blood. He must have been acutely aware that thousands of hot-tempered Bedouin were crowded into a small space.
Muhammad sat on his camel, on the hilltop, and preached a sermon to all who could hear it. Of course, it was not recorded, so we know what he said only by comparing the hadiths of it. Ibn Ishaq, an early biographer, reported that Muhammad did not shout the sermon himself. A certain amount of it was done in call-and-response method, so that the key phrases were shouted by the people themselves. A man with a loud voice stood next to him:
The man who used to repeat the Messenger of God’s words loudly to the people was when he was on ‘Arafah was Rabī‘ah b. Umayyah b. Khalaf. The Messenger of God would say to him. “Say: O people, the Messenger of God says, do you know what month this is?” and they would say, “The sacred month.”
The sermon reminded them of basic Islamic principles and forbade blood feuds and money-lending at interest. This declaration specifically canceled (by name) money debts owed to his Uncle Abbas, and the blood-debt owed to his cousin (whose baby son was being fostered by a Bedouin tribe that got into a battle; the child was killed by cross-fire). It also discussed the rights of wives and property rights. He concluded by reminding the listeners to repeat his word to everyone who was not there, commenting wryly that maybe some who heard it second-hand would understand it better than the ones sitting here. Then Muhammad asked them, “O people, have I faithfully delivered my message?” They shouted back, “O God (Allahumma) yes!” He replied, pointing upward, “O God, bear witness!”
After prayers, the company rode out and spent the night near where, the next day, they would throw pebbles at the pillars representing Satan. After the dawn prayer, they carried out the stoning, then sacrificed the camels and shaved their heads. (At least in Sunni telling, a lock of the Prophet’s hair was saved by Khalid, one of the warriors from Mecca who was already a top general. A recent convert, he had commanded the forces against Muhammad at Uhud.) For the last stage, the pilgrims returned to Mecca and repeated the first steps: circumambulating the Ka’aba and going between the hills of Safa and Marwa.
So here, in the tenth year after the move to Medina (Hijrah), is when the Muslim Hajj took its final shape. The idea of pilgrimage to Mecca had been around for a long time. At first we outsiders may wonder why it took so long to formalize the requirements. But when they lived in Mecca, there was no “pilgrimage” to get there. And when they left Mecca, they were in a state of war until all but the last years. Muhammad could have done this the previous year, but instead he had sent Abu Bakr to lead a pilgrim group, and then he sent Ali to catch up with them and deliver in person the latest Quranic revelation. He may have felt it was too much to lead the pilgrimage on the heels of Mecca’s conquest, so he waited a little for things to settle down.