The Farewell Pilgrimage: The Final Testament of Prophet Muhammad

The Farewell Pilgrimage (Hajjat al-Wada) of Dhu al-Hijjah 10 AH (March 632 CE) was the only Hajj that Prophet Muhammad performed in the ten years between the Hijra and his death. Its importance to Islam is of a particular kind. It was not a battle, a treaty, or a conquest, and it settled no political question. What it produced was a documented record: a large body of companions watched every stage of the pilgrimage, and their testimony — above all the long narration of Jabir ibn Abdullah preserved in Sahih Muslim — became the basis on which Muslim jurists afterwards determined how the Hajj is to be performed. Almost every ruling in the law of pilgrimage traces back to an act or a word recorded during these few weeks.

The pilgrimage is also the setting of the addresses conventionally grouped together as the Farewell Sermon. The Prophet spoke on the plain of Arafat on 9 Dhu al-Hijjah, and again at Mina during the days that followed. The reports of these addresses establish the inviolability of life, property, and honour; the abolition of usury and of pre-Islamic blood vengeance; obligations between spouses; and the equality of Arab and non-Arab before God. These passages have been quoted throughout Islamic history, and they are among the most frequently cited words attributed to the Prophet outside the Qur'an itself.

A note on evidence is necessary at the outset, because the Farewell Pilgrimage attracts a large quantity of loose material. The account below distinguishes three levels. Qur'anic verses connected to the pilgrimage are identified by chapter and verse. Reports transmitted in the canonical hadith collections are cited to the collection and number. Details known only from the classical historians and biographers — Ibn Ishaq as transmitted by Ibn Hisham, al-Waqidi, Ibn Sa'd, al-Tabari — are attributed to them by name, because their standard of transmission is not that of the hadith scholars. Where a figure or a detail is not established, that is stated rather than smoothed over. In particular, a widely circulated composite English text presented as "the Last Sermon of the Prophet" is not a translation of any single authenticated narration, and it is not used here.

The Setting: Arabia in 10 AH

By the tenth year after the Hijra, the political situation in Arabia had been transformed. The conquest of Mecca in 8 AH had brought the sanctuary under Muslim control, and in the two years that followed, delegations from tribes across the peninsula came to Medina to enter into agreements with the Prophet. The pilgrimage routes to Mecca were secure in a way they had not been for the previous two decades.

One change bore directly on the pilgrimage of 10 AH. In 9 AH the Prophet had sent Abu Bakr to lead the Hajj, and Ali ibn Abi Talib followed with the opening verses of Surah al-Tawbah, which were proclaimed at Mina. Those verses ended the participation of polytheists in the pilgrimage and abolished the practices that had accumulated around the sanctuary in the pre-Islamic period, including circumambulation while unclothed. The pilgrimage of 10 AH was therefore the first performed under fully Islamic conditions, which is part of why its details were watched so closely and recorded so carefully.

Jabir ibn Abdullah's narration opens by fixing this point precisely: the Prophet remained in Medina for nine years without performing Hajj, and then in the tenth year it was announced that he would do so (Sahih Muslim 1218). He had performed umrah — the lesser pilgrimage, outside the Hajj season — on more than one occasion, including in 7 AH under the terms of the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah. But the Hajj proper he performed once.

The Announcement and the Response

The announcement that the Prophet intended to perform Hajj brought very large numbers of people to Medina to travel with him. Jabir's account states simply that many came, and other reports describe the routes into the city filling with pilgrims.

The size of the gathering is not established by any reliable transmission. Classical and later authors give widely divergent figures — some tens of thousands, others well over a hundred thousand — and the range of these estimates is itself an indication that no count was made or preserved. What the sources do support is the comparative statement: this was the largest assembly of Muslims gathered in one place during the Prophet's lifetime, larger than the army that had marched on Mecca in 8 AH. No specific number is asserted here, because none can be.

The Journey to Mecca

Departure and the Entry into Ihram

The caravan left Medina late in the month of Dhu al-Qa'dah, 10 AH. Aisha bint Abu Bakr's report, transmitted in Sahih al-Bukhari, fixes the departure at five nights remaining of Dhu al-Qa'dah. The Prophet travelled to Dhu al-Hulayfah, the point at which pilgrims arriving by the Medina road assume the pilgrim state (ihram).

Two details from Dhu al-Hulayfah are preserved in Jabir's narration and both entered Islamic law. Asma bint Umays gave birth to her son Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr at the camp; she sent to ask what she should do, and was instructed to wash, assume ihram, and continue — establishing that childbirth does not bar a woman from the pilgrimage. And Aisha bint Abu Bakr began menstruating during the journey; the Prophet's instruction to her, recorded in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, was that she should perform every rite of the pilgrimage except the circumambulation of the Kaaba until she was able. These are not incidental anecdotes. They are the textual basis for a substantial body of later juristic discussion, and they illustrate how closely the community was observing.

At Dhu al-Hulayfah the Prophet entered ihram and began the talbiyah, the pilgrim's declaration: Labbayka Allahumma labbayk — "Here I am, O God, here I am; here I am, You have no partner, here I am." Jabir describes the sound of the talbiyah rising from the whole body of pilgrims as they moved.

The Question of the Pilgrim's Intention

One episode during and immediately after the journey occupies more space in the sources than any other, and it is entirely absent from popular summaries of the Farewell Pilgrimage. It concerns the form of pilgrimage the companions were to perform.

Pilgrimage may be entered in more than one way. A pilgrim may intend Hajj alone (ifrad); Hajj and umrah together in a single unbroken state of ihram, bringing a sacrificial animal (qiran); or umrah first, releasing from ihram, then re-entering it for Hajj (tamattu). The Prophet had brought sacrificial animals with him and was performing qiran. Most of the companions had not brought animals.

After the arrival in Mecca, the Prophet instructed those who had brought no sacrificial animal to complete their rites as umrah, release from ihram, and re-enter ihram for Hajj on 8 Dhu al-Hijjah. Jabir's narration records that this instruction was met with real reluctance and confusion. The companions had assumed they were performing Hajj; being told to release from the pilgrim state — which involves resuming ordinary life, including relations with one's wife — in the middle of what they understood to be a pilgrimage was unexpected, and some questioned it openly. The Prophet's response, as Jabir transmits it, was that had he not brought his sacrificial animals he would have done the same as he was commanding them, and that if he were to begin again he would not bring them.

The reason this exchange matters is that it became one of the most consequential passages in the law of pilgrimage. The permissibility and status of tamattu, and the degree to which the Prophet's instruction here was binding on later generations or specific to that year, were debated by the companions themselves — Umar ibn al-Khattab and others took positions on it during their own lifetimes — and by every subsequent school of law. It is recorded because it was contested, and the frankness of the report, including the companions' hesitation, is a mark of its authenticity rather than a blemish on it.

Arrival at the Sanctuary

On reaching Mecca the Prophet went to the sanctuary and performed the arrival circumambulation, going around the Kaaba seven times, then prayed two units of prayer, then went out to perform the sa'i — the passage seven times between the elevations of Safa and Marwah. Jabir records that he recited a verse of Surah al-Baqarah on approaching Safa: the verse identifying Safa and Marwah among the waymarks of God (Quran 2:158).

The rite of sa'i is connected in Islamic tradition to Hagar's search for water for her son Ishmael, and the sanctuary itself to the building of the Kaaba by Abraham and Ishmael, which the Qur'an describes directly (Quran 2:125–127). These associations are Qur'anic and secure, and they are the frame within which the rites were understood by those performing them.

The Days of the Pilgrimage

8 Dhu al-Hijjah: To Mina

On the eighth of Dhu al-Hijjah the pilgrims — those who had released from ihram now re-entering it — moved out to Mina, a valley a few kilometres east of Mecca. The Prophet prayed the noon, afternoon, sunset, and night prayers there, and the dawn prayer the following morning, before moving on. Jabir's narration is specific about this sequence of five prayers at Mina, and it established the timing that pilgrims follow.

9 Dhu al-Hijjah: The Standing at Arafat

The ninth of Dhu al-Hijjah is the essential day of the Hajj. Its central act, the wuquf or standing at Arafat, is the rite without which the pilgrimage is not valid — a principle expressed in the report transmitted in Jami' at-Tirmidhi and elsewhere that the Hajj is Arafat.

The Prophet travelled from Mina to Arafat in the morning. A tent had been pitched for him at Namirah, on the edge of the plain, and he remained there until the sun passed its zenith. He then rode his camel al-Qaswa into the valley of Uranah and addressed the people.

The Address at Arafat

Jabir ibn Abdullah's narration in Sahih Muslim 1218 is the primary record of what was said. It is not a verbatim transcript of an oration; it is a companion's report of the substance, and its clauses are best treated individually. The following are the elements it establishes.

The inviolability of life and property. The Prophet declared the blood and the property of those present to be sacrosanct, invoking the sanctity of the day, the month, and the place as the measure of that inviolability. A parallel report in Sahih al-Bukhari, from the Mina address, adds honour to life and property in the same formula. This clause is the single most frequently cited passage of the sermon, and it functions in Islamic legal literature as a general statement of the protections owed to persons within the community.

The abolition of usury. Interest-bearing obligations were cancelled. The report is precise in a way that gives it particular force: the Prophet named the outstanding interest owed to his own uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib, and declared it waived in its entirety. Beginning with his own family removed any suggestion that the ruling applied selectively. The Qur'anic prohibition of riba had been revealed earlier, in Surah al-Baqarah; the sermon enforced it.

The ending of pre-Islamic blood vengeance. Outstanding claims of blood revenge from the period before Islam were extinguished. Here too the Prophet began with his own kin, waiving the claim for the blood of a member of his family. In a society organised around the tribal obligation to avenge a killing, this was among the most far-reaching provisions of the address, and it aimed directly at the mechanism by which feuds perpetuated themselves across generations.

Obligations between spouses. The Prophet enjoined the men present to fear God in their treatment of their wives, describing them as a trust. The passage sets out reciprocal obligations rather than a one-sided injunction, and it is transmitted in Jabir's narration in the context of the rights each spouse owes the other.

The Book of God. Jabir's report records the Prophet stating that he had left among them the Book of God. A related formulation adding his own practice, the Sunnah, is transmitted in other collections. Both are cited in later literature on the sources of Islamic law.

The demand for acknowledgement. The address closes with the Prophet asking those present whether he had conveyed his message. They answered that he had. He then raised his finger and said, three times, that God should bear witness. Jabir's narration preserves this ending, and it is the element most consistently reported across the different accounts of the day.

The plain also saw the revelation discussed below. The Prophet remained standing at Arafat until sunset, having prayed the noon and afternoon prayers together, shortened, when he arrived.

The Verse Revealed at Arafat

Sahih al-Bukhari records, in its opening book, a report in which a Jewish man remarks to Umar ibn al-Khattab that had such a verse been revealed to his own community they would have made the day a festival; Umar identifies the verse and states that it was revealed to the Prophet while he stood at Arafat on the day of Arafat. The verse is from Surah al-Ma'idah:

"This day I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favour upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion." (Quran 5:3)

The connection between this verse and the Farewell Pilgrimage is therefore established by an authentic report, and the verse's meaning — the completion of the religion — gave the day of Arafat in 10 AH a significance the companions recognised at the time.

It is frequently claimed that this was the last verse of the Qur'an to be revealed. That claim does not survive examination and is not made here. Sahih al-Bukhari transmits from Ibn Abbas that the last verse revealed was the verse concerning usury, in Surah al-Baqarah, and the majority of Qur'anic scholars accordingly identify the final revealed verse as Quran 2:281. Others have argued for neighbouring verses of the same passage, or for the verse of debt. The distinction is a real one and worth stating plainly: Quran 5:3 declares the religion complete, and was revealed at Arafat; it is not, on the preponderance of the evidence, the chronologically last verse revealed.

The Night at Muzdalifah

After sunset the Prophet left Arafat for Muzdalifah, where he prayed the sunset and night prayers together and then slept until dawn. He prayed the dawn prayer, went to the elevation known as al-Mash'ar al-Haram, faced the direction of prayer, and supplicated, remaining until the sky lightened and departing before the sun rose. Jabir's narration gives this sequence in order, and it remains the pattern of the night of Muzdalifah.

10 Dhu al-Hijjah: Mina, the Stoning, and the Sacrifice

On the morning of the tenth the Prophet came to Mina and cast seven pebbles at the pillar nearest Mecca, Jamrat al-Aqabah, pronouncing the formula of magnification with each throw.

He then performed the sacrifice. Jabir's narration states that the Prophet slaughtered sixty-three animals from the herd of a hundred he had brought with him, and directed Ali ibn Abi Talib to slaughter the remainder. The often-repeated statement that he sacrificed all hundred with his own hand is contradicted by the narration and is not used here. The two men then ate from the sacrifice and drank of its broth.

The Prophet's head was shaved after the sacrifice, and the hair distributed among those present. He then rode to Mecca and performed the circumambulation of the pilgrimage proper, tawaf al-ifadah, and drank from the well of Zamzam.

The order of these acts on the tenth — stoning, sacrifice, shaving, circumambulation — matters in law, because a series of questions were put to the Prophet at Mina that day by pilgrims who had performed them in a different sequence. The reports of his answers, transmitted in both Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, indicate that he did not require the rites be repeated. This became the basis for the latitude that the schools of law allow in the ordering of the tenth day's rites.

The Address at Mina and the Days of Tashriq

The Prophet remained at Mina through the days of Tashriq, the days following the tenth, casting pebbles at the three pillars on each of them. He addressed the pilgrims at Mina more than once during these days, and several of the passages most often associated with the Farewell Sermon belong to these addresses rather than to Arafat.

Sahih al-Bukhari transmits from the Mina address the declaration that blood, property, and honour are inviolable, in the formula invoking the sanctity of the day, the month, and the city; the statement concerning the fixed number of months of the year; and the instruction that those present should convey what they had heard to those who were absent. That final instruction is of some historical consequence: it treats the transmission of the address as an obligation, and the hadith literature reflects the result, since the Mina material is transmitted through a notably wide range of companions.

The passage on human equality belongs to this Mina material. It is transmitted in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, in a report of the Prophet's address during the days of Tashriq, and states that all people descend from one father, that no Arab has precedence over a non-Arab nor a non-Arab over an Arab, that neither a red-skinned man nor a black-skinned man has precedence over the other, and that precedence lies only in piety. Hadith scholars have graded this report favourably and it is widely cited.

Two points of accuracy are worth recording. First, the wording of the Tashriq report contrasts ahmar and aswad — red and black — which was how the peoples of the region were conventionally distinguished in Arabic usage. Other narrations of the same principle carry abyad and aswad, white and black, and it is that form which has become familiar in English; both belong to the transmission, but they are not interchangeable when a specific report is being cited. Second, this passage is regularly presented as part of a single continuous sermon delivered at Arafat, when it is better attested as part of the Mina addresses. Neither point diminishes the content, and both are stated because the encyclopaedia's standard is to represent transmitted texts as they are transmitted.

12 or 13 Dhu al-Hijjah: Departure

The Prophet completed the days of Tashriq at Mina, returned to Mecca, and performed the circumambulation of departure, tawaf al-wada, before leaving. This farewell circumambulation is a rite distinct from tawaf al-ifadah performed on the tenth, and the two are sometimes conflated in summary accounts.

"Take Your Rites From Me"

The reason the Farewell Pilgrimage occupies the position it does in Islamic law is captured in a short report transmitted in Sahih Muslim: while performing the rites the Prophet instructed those present to take their rites from him, adding that he did not know whether he would perform the pilgrimage again after that year.

Two consequences followed. The first is legal. Because the community understood that they were watching a normative performance, the level of recorded detail is extraordinarily high — the timing of prayers at each station, the number of circuits, the words spoken, the order of acts, the exceptions granted to particular individuals. The Hajj is, in consequence, the most minutely regulated act of worship in Islamic law, and the regulation is overwhelmingly derived from this single occasion.

The second is that the phrase gave the pilgrimage its name. The reference to not performing Hajj again was understood as an indication that his life was drawing to a close, and the pilgrimage came to be called Hajjat al-Wada, the Pilgrimage of Farewell. The Prophet died in Rabi al-Awwal of the following year, roughly three months after returning to Medina.

The Return Journey

The caravan returned north towards Medina after the pilgrimage. One episode of the return journey requires mention, both because it is historically well attested and because it is understood differently by the two principal Muslim traditions.

At a watering place called Ghadir Khumm, on the route back, the Prophet halted and addressed the pilgrims. Reports of the address, transmitted in the Musnad of Ahmad ibn Hanbal, in Jami' at-Tirmidhi, and in other collections, record him speaking of Ali ibn Abi Talib in terms of close attachment and loyalty. The occurrence of the halt and the address is not in dispute between the traditions, and a number of hadith scholars have graded the core reports favourably.

The interpretation is where they differ. In Shia Islam, the address at Ghadir Khumm is understood as a designation of Ali as the Prophet's successor in the leadership of the community, and its anniversary is observed. In Sunni Islam, it is understood as an affirmation of Ali's standing and a rebuke to those who had criticised his conduct on an earlier mission, without constituting an appointment to the succession. This encyclopaedia records the event and both readings, and does not adjudicate between them. Readers should note that the question is bound up with the wider history of the succession, which is treated in the articles on the individuals concerned.

What the Pilgrimage Established

The Law of Pilgrimage

The rites of Hajj as performed by Muslims today follow the sequence recorded in 10 AH: ihram assumed at a boundary point, arrival circumambulation and sa'i, Mina on the eighth, Arafat on the ninth with the standing until sunset, Muzdalifah overnight, the tenth at Mina with stoning, sacrifice and shaving, circumambulation of the pilgrimage, the days of Tashriq with the stoning of the three pillars, and the circumambulation of departure. The schools of law differ on secondary matters — whether particular acts are obligatory or recommended, what compensates for an omission, the permissible latitude in ordering the tenth day — but the framework is common to all of them and is derived from this occasion.

The Sermon in Islamic Legal and Political Thought

The clauses of the Arafat and Mina addresses have been used in Islamic legal writing as general principles rather than as rules confined to the pilgrimage. The inviolability of blood, property, and honour is invoked in discussions of criminal law and of the protections owed to persons; the abolition of usury in the law of contract; the ending of blood vengeance in the law of homicide and compensation; the passage on spouses in family law.

The passage on the equality of Arab and non-Arab has had a distinct history. It was cited in the early centuries in the context of the status of non-Arab Muslims within an empire whose ruling stratum was Arab, and it has been cited in modern discussions of racial equality. The Qur'anic verse most often read alongside it states that God made humanity into peoples and tribes so that they might know one another, and that the most honoured are the most conscious of God (Quran 49:13).

The Historical Record Itself

There is a further consequence, less often noticed. The Farewell Pilgrimage produced the largest single body of eyewitness testimony about any episode in the Prophet's life. Jabir ibn Abdullah's narration alone is one of the longest hadiths in Sahih Muslim, and he was still transmitting it decades later to students who came to ask him about it — the narration opens with such a visit. The pilgrimage is thus not only the source of the law of Hajj but one of the best-documented events of seventh-century Arabia, and the density of independent transmission is the reason its details can be stated with confidence where so much else in the period cannot.

Conclusion

The Farewell Pilgrimage was the last major public act of the Prophet's life and the one he most evidently intended to be recorded. He performed the rites of the pilgrimage in a manner meant to be copied, told those present to take their rites from him, delivered addresses at Arafat and Mina that set out obligations of general application, and instructed the pilgrims to carry what they had heard to those who were not there. Three months later he was dead, and the community that buried him possessed, in the memories of the tens of thousands who had made that journey, a detailed and widely corroborated record of what he had done and said.

The Qur'anic verse revealed at Arafat declared the religion complete. What the pilgrimage itself supplied was the documentation — the reason that the Hajj performed each year follows a pattern fixed in a single week of 632 CE, and the reason that the sentences spoken on the plain of Arafat and in the valley of Mina have remained in continuous use in Islamic legal and moral argument for fourteen centuries.

References and Further Reading

Primary Islamic Sources

• Quran, Surah Al-Ma'idah (5:3) — "This day I have perfected for you your religion" — revealed at Arafat during the Farewell Pilgrimage, as established by the report of Umar ibn al-Khattab in Sahih al-Bukhari
• Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah (2:125–127, 2:158, 2:196–203) — the building of the Kaaba by Abraham and Ishmael, the waymarks of Safa and Marwah, and the verses establishing the rites of Hajj
• Quran, Surah Al-Baqarah (2:275–281) — the prohibition of usury, enforced in the Arafat address; verse 281 is identified by the majority of scholars as the last verse of the Qur'an revealed
• Quran, Surah Al-Hujurat (49:13) — humanity created as peoples and tribes, the verse read alongside the Mina address on human equality
• Quran, Surah Al-Tawbah (9:1–29) — the verses proclaimed by Ali at Mina in 9 AH, which ended polytheist participation in the pilgrimage
• Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Hajj, hadith 1218 — the narration of Jabir ibn Abdullah, the single most detailed account of the Farewell Pilgrimage: the departure, ihram at Dhu al-Hulayfah, the instruction on tamattu, the rites at Arafat, Muzdalifah and Mina, the address at Arafat, and the sacrifice of sixty-three animals by the Prophet's own hand with the remainder by Ali
• Sahih Muslim, Kitab al-Hajj, hadith 1297 — "Take your rites from me," with the Prophet's indication that he might not perform the pilgrimage again
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Iman, hadith 45 — the report of Umar ibn al-Khattab establishing that Quran 5:3 was revealed at Arafat on the day of Arafat
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Hajj, hadith 1739–1742 — the Mina address: the inviolability of blood, property and honour; the months of the year; and the instruction to convey the message to the absent
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Hajj — the reports of Aisha bint Abu Bakr's menstruation during the pilgrimage and the Prophet's instruction concerning the rites she could and could not perform
• Sahih al-Bukhari, Kitab al-Tafsir — the report of Ibn Abbas that the last verse of the Qur'an revealed was the verse of usury
• Jami' at-Tirmidhi, Kitab al-Hajj — the report that the Hajj is Arafat
• Ahmad ibn Hanbal, Musnad — the address during the days of Tashriq at Mina on the equality of Arab and non-Arab; and the reports of the address at Ghadir Khumm on the return journey

Classical Islamic Sources

• Ibn Hisham, Abd al-Malik. Al-Sirah al-Nabawiyyah, Vol. 2. Edited by Mustafa al-Saqqa. Cairo: Maktabat Mustafa al-Babi al-Halabi, 1955. [Transmitting Ibn Ishaq, c. 760 CE]. The earliest continuous biographical narrative of the pilgrimage.
• Al-Waqidi, Muhammad ibn Umar. Kitab al-Maghazi. Edited by Marsden Jones. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966. [Original c. 820 CE]. Detailed itinerary and logistical material on the journey.
• Ibn Sa'd, Muhammad. Al-Tabaqat al-Kubra, Vol. 2. Edited by Eduard Sachau. Leiden: Brill, 1904–1940. [Original c. 845 CE]. The date of departure from Medina and the sequence of the journey.
• Al-Tabari, Muhammad ibn Jarir. Tarikh al-Rusul wa'l-Muluk, Vol. 9. Edited by M.J. de Goeje. Leiden: Brill, 1879–1901. [Original c. 915 CE]. Narrative of the pilgrimage with variant chains of transmission.
• Ibn Kathir, Ismail. Al-Bidayah wa'l-Nihayah, Vol. 5. [Original 14th century CE]. Synthesis of the hadith and historical material, with attention to the grading of the reports.
• Al-Nawawi, Yahya ibn Sharaf. Al-Minhaj: Sharh Sahih Muslim. [Original 13th century CE]. The standard classical commentary on Jabir's narration, and the principal source for the juristic reading of its clauses.

Academic and Scholarly Sources

• Peters, Francis E. The Hajj: The Muslim Pilgrimage to Mecca and the Holy Places. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. Places the pilgrimage of 10 AH within the long history of the Meccan sanctuary and its rites.
• Lings, Martin. Muhammad: His Life Based on the Earliest Sources. Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 1983. Narrative account of the pilgrimage drawn from the early biographical sources.
• Watt, W. Montgomery. Muhammad at Medina. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956. Analysis of the Medinan period and of the political situation in Arabia in 10 AH.
• Hawting, Gerald R. "The Origins of the Islamic Sanctuary at Mecca." In Studies on the First Century of Islamic Society, edited by G.H.A. Juynboll. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1982. Scholarly treatment of the transformation of the sanctuary and its rites.
• Kister, M.J. "Some Reports Concerning Mecca from Jahiliyya to Islam." Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 15 (1972). Detailed source-critical study of reports concerning the sanctuary and the pilgrimage.
• Peters, Francis E. Muhammad and the Origins of Islam. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Academic study of the final period of the Prophet's mission.

Further Reading

• Nasr, Seyyed Hossein. The Heart of Islam: Enduring Values for Humanity. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2002. Discusses the enduring significance of the principles stated in the addresses.
• Wolfe, Michael, ed. One Thousand Roads to Mecca: Ten Centuries of Travelers Writing about the Muslim Pilgrimage. New York: Grove Press, 1997. Accounts of the pilgrimage across the centuries, showing the continuity of the rites established in 10 AH.