Hajj

The hajj is one of the largest global events. The annual pilgrimage to Mecca draws millions of Muslims from around the world to gather during the final month of the Muslim calendar, Dhu al-Hijjah, and perform a series of ritual prayers and offerings in dedication to God. Many personal accounts of the pilgrimage offer insight into the spiritually transformative experience of performing these rituals and, in turn, of performing fealty to God. Until more recently, there has been little sustained scholarly work on the place of the pilgrimage in the social, political, and economic life of the Muslim community. Exploring the hajj in relation to these spheres tells a great deal about the historically dynamic relationship between religious authority and the global organization of Muslim communities.

The Qur'ān offers the foundational articulation of the hajj as a central human obligation to God. Discussion of the hajj occurs during the course of the entire text (including but not limited to Chapter 22, The Pilgrimage), establishing the fact of this obligation (as well as its exceptions) and identifying its vital role in cultivating devotion to God. The Qur'ān also folds the history of the ka'ba, which orients prayer for Muslims around the world and serves as the center of ritual devotion during the hajj, into the Abrahamic (Muslim) frame, in effect “Islamizing” pre-Islamic traditions of pilgrimage to the site. There is some mention of how pilgrims should prepare for the pilgrimage and what pilgrims actually do while in Mecca and its environs during the 3-day hajj period. However, the ritual procedures of devotion that occupy much of the pilgrims’ time grow out of prophetic practice, or Sunnah.

These practices—reports (hadith) of which were first collected and verified by scholars in the eighth and ninth centuries CE—constitute a foundational exegesis of God's revelation, covering thousands of topics and situations that confronted the early community. In Sahih al-Bukhari, a seminal collection that first appeared in the 9th century CE, authenticated reports delivered by the Prophet Muhammad's closest companions touch on myriad hajj-related matters, including the conditions of purity (ihram) necessary for participation, the proper circumambulation of the ka'ba, proper forms of prayer, the pace of the procession to and from Arafat, and the procedure for the ritual sacrifice of sheep that marks the close of the hajj. Although the community has and continues to work to protect the sanctity of these ritual procedures, revolutions in political, economic, and legal systems governing the larger contexts in which the hajj occurs cannot but alter the place of the hajj in constituting the Muslim community.

Reports of the Prophet's pilgrimages to Mecca (from Medina, approximately 200 miles away) [Page 776]suggest that the pilgrimage—particularly the journey to and from the site—was very much a community affair. Shi'i sources, for example, maintain that on his final pilgrimage, the Prophet designated Ali as his successor. Although Sunni sources dispute this account, it nonetheless underscores the intimacy of the hajj at this point in the community's history. In the decades and centuries after the Prophet's death in 632 CE, the increasing size and geographic scope of the Muslim community necessitated the development of a more formal infrastructure to facilitate the movement of people and goods to Mecca from Spain, North Africa, South and East Asia, and across the Middle East.

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