The Final Year

After one of the main kings of Yemen from Himyar accepted Islam, the Prophet ﷺ sent Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA to be his deputy and judge, and personally accompanied him partway on the road south of Madinah, with Mu'adh RA riding while the Prophet ﷺ walked alongside him, a great honor. The Prophet ﷺ instructed him to call the People of the Book to tawhid first, then prayer, then zakat, taken from the rich among them and given to their poor. The Prophet ﷺ also sent Abu Musa al-Ash'ari RA to another province of Yemen. As he saw Mu'adh RA off, the Prophet ﷺ gave him his final advice and told him it was possible he would not see him again, which came to pass, as the Prophet ﷺ passed away before Mu'adh RA returned from Yemen.

Placed here because: ~ A few months after Abu Bakr RA's Hajj; no month is given.

Toward the end of the 9th year of the Hijrah, the Prophet ﷺ sent a wave of sahaba out as governors and teachers of Islam, especially to the north and south of Arabia, among them Mu'adh ibn Jabal RA, sent to Yemen, and Abu Musa al-Ash'ari RA, sent to another Yemeni province. At the start of the 10th year, the Prophet ﷺ sent Khalid ibn al-Walid RA to the province of Najran, instructing him not to attack until he had given the people three days and the choice of (i) accepting Islam, (ii) paying jizya if they were Christian or Jewish, or (iii) leaving. Khalid RA sent out criers with this message, and the entire province of Najran accepted Islam without any fighting. Uncertain what to do next, Khalid RA wrote to the Prophet ﷺ reporting that the people had all become Muslim and asking for instructions; the Prophet ﷺ told him to send a delegation up to Madinah so that he could test them himself. When the delegation arrived, the Prophet ﷺ did not recognize them and remarked on their resemblance to the people of Hind. They identified themselves as being from Najran, and the Prophet ﷺ questioned them further (at times sharply, to test the genuineness of their faith) before asking what secret lay behind their being always victorious over those who attacked them; they answered that they never fought among themselves once a decision was made, and that they never wronged other people.

Placed here because: ~ Beginning of 10 AH; its order against Mu'adh's departure is not settled.

Ibrahim, the infant son of the Prophet ﷺ and Maria al-Qibtiyya RA, fell ill and died in the first quarter of the 10th year of the Hijrah, after living a year and four to six months; at the most tender, adorable age, just as he had begun walking, laughing, and recognizing people. Word came that he was dying, and the Prophet ﷺ went with some of the companions to Maria's home in al-Awali. He ﷺ held Ibrahim as he wheezed and coughed with the pangs of death, and the Prophet ﷺ's own tears began to fall.

Placed here because: First quarter of 10 AH.

On the day Ibrahim ibn Muhammad ﷺ died, a solar eclipse occurred within a few hours of his death. People in Madinah began to say that the sun was grieving and crying at the sorrow of the Prophet ﷺ. On hearing this, the Prophet ﷺ gathered the people and delivered a khutbah correcting the misconception.

Placed here because: The same day as the child's death.

The Prophet ﷺ's only Hajj after the Hijrah, and his last, undertaken in the 10th year of the Hijrah once word went out that he intended to go. Tens of thousands of people flocked to Madinah and swelled the caravan the whole way to Makkah, so that the sahaba said they could see nothing but riders and pedestrians in every direction; it was the largest gathering the Prophet ﷺ ever addressed, and most of those present are not known to us by name. He ﷺ left Madinah on 25 Dhu al-Qa'dah, prayed and entered ihram at Dhu al-Hulayfah, and reached Makkah ten days later on the 4th of Dhu al-Hijjah, camping outside the city overnight before entering the next morning. Asma bint Umays RA gave birth to Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr at Dhu al-Hulayfah just as the caravan set out; the Prophet ﷺ told her to bathe, bandage herself, and enter ihram regardless. After performing tawaf and the sa'i, the Prophet ﷺ announced at Marwah that anyone who had not brought a sacrificial animal should end their ihram and treat their pilgrimage as an Umrah, a new and startling instruction. The pilgrims had set out with different intentions, some for Hajj alone, some for Hajj and Umrah together, and some for Umrah, and between them they performed all three recognized forms of Hajj (Ifrad, Qiran, and Tamattu'). Ali RA arrived from Yemen with sacrificial camels for the Prophet ﷺ (with those the Prophet ﷺ had brought, they numbered one hundred), and found Fatima RA already out of ihram on the Prophet ﷺ's instruction; because Ali RA had entered ihram intending to match whatever intention the Prophet ﷺ held (Qiran), he remained in ihram until the sacrifice. On the 8th of Dhu al-Hijjah (Yawm al-Tarwiyah) the company moved to Mina; on the 9th the Prophet ﷺ went on to Namirah and then Arafah, passing by al-Mash'ar al-Haram at Muzdalifah, where the Quraysh had halted in pre-Islamic times without going out of the sanctuary, to stand instead on the open plain of Arafah itself, the essence of the Hajj. He stood there in du'a from just after Zuhr until sunset before moving on, slowly and deliberately, to Muzdalifah, where he prayed Maghrib and Isha together and rested until Fajr. Sawda bint Zam'a RA, elderly and slow-moving, asked and was given permission to leave Muzdalifah early to avoid the crowds, and the Prophet ﷺ also sent the weak of his family ahead during the night, Ibn Abbas RA among them; this is the basis for the fiqh that the elderly and weak may leave before the rest. From Muzdalifah the Prophet ﷺ went to Mina, stoned Jamrah al-Kubra, and sacrificed 63 camels with his own hand (Ibn al-Qayyim observes that the number matched the years of his life) before having Ali RA sacrifice the remaining 37 of the 100. He then returned to Makkah for tawaf al-ifadah and to drink from the Zamzam water drawn for him by the Banu Abdul Muttalib. The Prophet ﷺ stayed in Mina through the days of Tashriq, departing on the 13th after performing Tawaf al-Wada' (the Farewell Tawaf) by night. Aisha RA, whose menses had begun just before entering Makkah, was told to perform every rite except tawaf; once she had purified herself and completed Hajj, she asked to also perform an Umrah like the Prophet ﷺ's other wives, and was sent with her brother Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr RA to enter ihram at Tan'im for that purpose before rejoining the caravan back to Madinah. The name "Hajjat al-Wada'" (the Farewell Hajj) was already used in the Prophet ﷺ's own lifetime: on Yawm al-Nahr he repeatedly asked Allah to bear witness while addressing the people, and the sahaba sensed, without yet grasping it fully, that he was bidding them farewell. Later writers estimated the crowd at a round 100,000, though this figure is a guess. Every hadith of Hajj fiqh in the books ultimately traces back to this one pilgrimage, since it was the only Hajj he performed after the Hijrah. On the very last day of Hajj, the 13th, the Prophet ﷺ performed Tawaf al-Wada' and, that same evening, set out on the journey back to Madinah, returning there in Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH. This was his final journey: once he entered Madinah, he never left it again before his death.

Placed here because: Ep. 100: "he left Madinah on the 25th" of Dhul Qa'dah, 10 AH; "on the morning of Thursday, which was the 8th of Dhu al-Hijjah, he prayed Fajr" and went out to Mina.

On the 9th of Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH (a Friday, and the Day of al-Hajj al-Akbar) the Prophet ﷺ stood in the Valley of Aranah at Arafah and addressed the assembled multitude, with Abbas RA and Ali RA quieting the crowd so his words could carry (some sahaba reported hearing him even from their tents, which is counted among his miracles). He opened by telling the people he did not know whether he would meet them again after that year. It was on this occasion that Allah revealed the verse "This day, I have perfected for you your religion and completed My favor upon you and have approved for you Islam as religion" [Qur'an, 5:3], one of the last verses revealed, though not the very last. In the sermon he declared the blood, wealth, and honor of every Muslim sacred, exactly as sacred as that day, that month, and that land; abolished everything of Jahiliyyah, beginning with his own family's unpaid blood-money claim against the Hudhayl and his uncle al-Abbas RA's outstanding riba; and charged the people to fear Allah regarding women's rights, spelling out the mutual rights of spouses. He closed by telling the people they would be asked about him on the Day of Judgment, and that he had left them the Book of Allah, holding to which they would never go astray. When the people affirmed that he had conveyed the message, discharged his duty, and been sincere with them, he raised his hands and called three times, "O Allah, bear witness."

Placed here because: Friday, 9 Dhul Hijjah 10 AH.

During the Farewell Hajj, the Prophet ﷺ gave at least three sermons at Mina (on the 10th, 11th, and likely 12th of Dhu al-Hijjah) in addition to the separate Sermon of Arafah on the 9th. On Yawm al-Nahr (the Day of Sacrifice, the 10th) he declared that the calendar had returned to its rightful order as Allah had created it (a year of 12 months, four of them sacred (Dhu al-Qa'dah, Dhu al-Hijjah, and Muharram consecutively, plus the Rajab of Mudar)) because that year, unlike others, the Quraysh's old habit of swapping the sacred months around to suit their wars had not thrown the calendar out of order; he told the people to keep it that way from then on. He then quizzed the people, pausing dramatically each time as if he might give a different answer, on what month, city, and day it was, before confirming Dhu al-Hijjah, Makkah, and Yawm al-Nahr himself, and used the answers to press home that their lives, wealth, and honor were exactly as sacred as that month, that city, and that day. He warned them, "Woe to you, do not return to being kuffar, killing one another," and asked those present to carry his words to those absent, since the absent might understand them even better. In one version he added that Shaytan had despaired of ever being worshipped again in Arabia, but still hoped to provoke the Muslims into fighting each other over matters they thought trivial. Related hadiths from these Mina sermons define the Muslim as the one whose hands and tongue other Muslims are safe from, the Mu'min as the one entrusted with people's wealth, the muhajir as the one who has left sin behind, and the mujahid as the one striving in Allah's path; promise Jannah to whoever fears Allah, prays, fasts Ramadan, gives zakat, and obeys the rulers; and declare that all people share one Lord and one father, Adam, with no superiority of Arab over non-Arab or of one skin color over another except by taqwa, a claim with no precedent among the thinkers of any prior society. On this same occasion, addressing the people while bidding them farewell and repeatedly asking Allah to bear witness, the Prophet ﷺ gave this pilgrimage the name by which it has been known ever since: Hajjat al-Wada', the Farewell Hajj.

Placed here because: ~ Ep. 100: "this year in which the Prophet ﷺ did Hajj, it just so happened" the months had returned to their places; declared in the sermons of the Hajj.

As the caravan returned from the Farewell Hajj, Ali RA (who had come from Yemen with the zakat and sadaqa wealth of its people, plus the 100 consecrated camels for the Prophet ﷺ) had rushed ahead to meet the Prophet ﷺ in Makkah, leaving someone else in charge of his entourage. That person distributed new clothes to the entourage out of the Yemeni sadaqa funds, which was not permissible; when Ali RA found out, he had the clothes returned, angering the entourage. They complained to the Prophet ﷺ about Ali RA once the pilgrimage was over, and the Prophet ﷺ stopped at Ghadir Khumm, outside Makkah, and addressed the people in Ali RA's defense.

Placed here because: On the road home, shortly after 13 Dhul Hijjah.

After Najran accepted Islam, the Prophet ﷺ appointed Amr ibn Hazm al-Ansari RA as governor and religious teacher over the province. About a month before his own death, the Prophet ﷺ dictated to Amr RA a letter over a page long, full of wasiyyat (instructions) on how to teach the people, among the very last things he ﷺ ever dictated. One clause of the letter states that no one should touch the Qur'an except one who is tahir (in a state of purity).

Placed here because: ~ About a month before the death; placed before Safar on that basis.

Toward the end of Safar in the 11th year of the Hijrah, a few weeks before his death, the Prophet ﷺ ordered an expedition to the lands of the Romans (the Byzantine Empire), aiming at al-Sham and in particular Palestine. He called on the sahaba, including Abu Bakr RA, Umar RA, and many of the senior Companions, to gather their arms, and appointed Usama ibn Zayd RA (then only 17 or 18 years old, and the son of his freed slave and adopted son Zayd ibn Harithah RA, who had been killed by the Romans at Mu'tah) to lead them. Some in Madinah murmured that Usama was too young and not of Quraysh to lead senior sahaba, though none of the senior Companions themselves objected; the Prophet ﷺ rebuked the criticism, reminding the people that Zayd ibn Harithah RA's own leadership had once been doubted the same way, and declared Usama the most beloved of people to him after his father. Usama departed Madinah on the last day of Safar, but when the army was one or two days out, word reached him that the Prophet ﷺ had fallen ill, and he camped outside the city, eventually returning to visit the Prophet ﷺ on the day of his death.

Placed here because: Ep. 101: "Toward the very end of Safar of the 11th year of the Hijrah ... Usama left on the very last day of Safar."

Toward the end of Safar in the 11th year of the Hijrah, shortly before he fell ill, the Prophet ﷺ visited the site of Uhud and made a special du'a for the Muslims who had been killed there, foremost among them his uncle Hamzah ibn Abdul Muttalib RA.

Placed here because: ~ End of Safar 11 AH; whether before or after Usama's departure is not given.

On the last day of Safar or the first day of Rabi' al-Awwal, 11 AH, the Prophet ﷺ woke in the middle of the night and knocked on the door of his mawla Abu Muwayhiba RA, telling him that Jibril had commanded him to go to Baqi' al-Gharqad, the graveyard of Madinah. They went together in the night, and he made a beautiful du'a for the people buried there. This was the last time the Prophet ﷺ ever visited Baqi'.

Placed here because: Last day of Safar or 1 Rabi' al-Awwal; the illness began on the way back.

The Prophet ﷺ's final illness began in the house of Maymunah RA, around the 1st or 2nd of Rabi' al-Awwal, 11 AH, with a fever. In the first days he continued, as was his practice, to visit each wife's house in turn, until he grew too weak and asked his wives' permission to remain in the house of Aisha RA for the rest of his illness, which they granted. There, Aisha RA regularly recited ruqya over him and poured water on him to bring down the fever; when Aisha RA herself once complained of a headache, the Prophet ﷺ, in the midst of his own pain, gently teased her that his pain was worse, and that he would outlive her to wash her body and pray over her, to which she teased back that he would only enjoy that so he could be free for his other wives. As the illness worsened he asked for seven skins of water to be poured over him so that he could go out and advise the people, and he came out with a cloth bound around his head. As word spread that the Prophet ﷺ, who had never been this sick before, was praying only shortened prayers and withdrawing quickly afterward, Umar RA, Abd al-Rahman ibn Awf RA and other sahaba without houses nearby began camping in the Masjid out of concern, and it grew crowded with people waiting for news. Carried to the Masjid on the shoulders of al-Abbas RA and Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, his closest Ahl al-Bayt, the Prophet ﷺ addressed the people from the minbar on what is thought to have been a Friday. He commanded that all the private doors opening from houses directly into the Masjid be closed, making a single exception for the door of Abu Bakr RA, an honor understood as marking him out above the rest of the sahaba. On a night traditionally dated to that same Thursday or Friday, when the Prophet ﷺ became too weak to rise and lead Salat al-Isha (fainting repeatedly as he tried) he instructed Aisha RA to have Abu Bakr RA lead the prayer in his place. Aisha RA, reluctant for her father to be linked with what she feared might be the Prophet ﷺ's death, twice tried to have Hafsa RA's father Umar RA lead instead, but the Prophet ﷺ saw through the scheme, comparing the two to the women around Yusuf AS, and insisted on Abu Bakr RA. From then until the Prophet ﷺ's death, Abu Bakr RA led the congregational prayers: the first time in ten years in Madinah that anyone besides the Prophet ﷺ had done so as a standing arrangement. A day or two before his death, the Prophet ﷺ found enough strength to be carried out to a Zuhr prayer already in progress; he motioned Abu Bakr RA to remain in the imam's place and led the prayer seated, with Abu Bakr RA standing beside him relaying his takbirs, a moment read by Sunni scholars as the clearest available sign of who the Prophet ﷺ wished the ummah to follow after him, delivered without ever naming a successor outright. After that Zuhr, on the minbar for the last time, he urged the people to take care of the Ansar, who had fulfilled what was due upon them. In those last days he also ordered, from his sickbed, that the polytheists be expelled from the Arabian Peninsula and that delegations be honoured with gifts as he had honoured them; three days before his death he told the people that none of them should die except while thinking well of Allah; and Ali RA reports that among his very last words were "The prayer, the prayer, and fear Allah regarding those whom your right hands possess." On the Sunday before he died, the Prophet ﷺ asked Aisha RA how much money remained in the house; she brought him the few gold dinars left in the house, and he insisted they be given away at once, asking what he could expect of Allah if he met Him with them still in his possession. He died owning nothing of gold or silver, only some barley in a small cup, his mule, an armor pledged to a Jewish creditor in Madinah for 30 sa' of barley, and a plot of land already given to the poor. At Fajr on Monday, 12 Rabi' al-Awwal, too weak to lead the prayer himself, he had Abu Bakr RA lead as usual, but asked to be sat up so he could lift the curtain between his room and the Masjid; seeing his ummah praying in rows filled him with such visible joy that the sahaba nearly broke their own prayer for happiness; it was the last time they ever saw his face. In those final days Fatimah RA, the last of his children still living, came to him; he told her privately that his time had come and that she would be the first of his family to join him and the leader of the women of Jannah, news she kept secret until after his death, when she told Aisha RA. As the pangs of death intensified, he was heard repeating "there is no god but Allah; verily, death has its pangs," while making du'a for Allah's help to bear it. Usama ibn Zayd RA, who had turned his expedition back on hearing of the illness, came to visit and received only a silent, weakly repeated gesture skyward in blessing, since the Prophet ﷺ could no longer speak. Aisha RA, cradling him against her chest, later gave him a miswak borrowed from her brother Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr RA, which he used with unusual vigor. In the heat of midday on Monday, 12 Rabi' al-Awwal, 11 AH, with his gaze lifted and Aisha RA leaning in to listen, he was heard asking to be joined with the prophets, the truthful, the martyrs and the righteous, and repeating, "O Allah, forgive me, have mercy on me, and let me be with al-Rafiq al-A'la" three times, his last words, before passing away in her house, on her day, in her lap. News of his death threw Madinah into shock. Umar RA, unable to accept it, threatened to strike down anyone who repeated the claim and insisted the Prophet ﷺ had merely gone to Allah as Musa AS once had for forty days. Abu Bakr RA, who had gone home to Awali after seeing the Prophet ﷺ smile that morning and assuming he was recovering, rode back at once, confirmed the death at Aisha RA's house, kissed the Prophet ﷺ's forehead, and then addressed the Masjid from the lower step of the minbar (never its top, a restraint every khalifa and khatib after him observed), declaring that whoever worshipped Muhammad ﷺ should know Muhammad ﷺ had died, but whoever worshipped Allah should know Allah is ever-living and does not die, before reciting [Qur'an, 3:144]. Hearing the verse, Umar RA collapsed, saying it was as though he had never heard it before. Elegies (ritha') were composed for the Prophet ﷺ by several sahaba, most famously his poet Hassan ibn Thabit RA. On Tuesday, his household (al-Abbas RA, his sons al-Fadl RA and Qutham RA, Ali ibn Abi Talib RA, Usama ibn Zayd RA and the freed slave Shuqran, as Ibn Ishaq names them) gathered to wash his body, and are reported to have been guided by an unseen voice to wash him with his clothes still on. He was shrouded in three plain white garments from Yemen, without a shirt or turban. When the sahaba disputed where to bury him, Abu Bakr RA recalled the Prophet ﷺ having said that a prophet is buried wherever his soul is taken, so a grave was dug beneath the very spot in Aisha RA's room where he had died. No one led the funeral prayer: the people of Madinah came in to pray over him in groups, first the men, then the women, then the children, and he was buried in the middle of the night between Tuesday and Wednesday. Fatimah RA, seeing the fresh grave where his bed had been, could not contain her grief; Anas ibn Malik RA, who had served the Prophet ﷺ for ten years, recalled that on the day the Prophet ﷺ entered Madinah everything in it was lit up, and on the day he died everything in it went dark, and they had hardly dusted off their hands from burying him before they felt their hearts had changed.

Placed here because: Ep. 100: "he ﷺ is going to pass away on the 12th of Rabi' al-Awwal in the 11th year of the Hijrah."

When news of the Prophet ﷺ's death reached Makkah, many of the recent converts there (almost all of whom had accepted Islam only after the Conquest of Makkah) flirted with leaving the religion, and mobs gathered so that the governor of Makkah feared for his life and went into hiding. Suhayl ibn Amr, by then among the most devoted worshippers of the Conquest-era converts, stood at the Ka'bah and delivered a fiery admonition that calmed the mobs and brought the governor out of hiding.

Placed here because: Shortly after the news reached Makkah.

In the year of delegations Musaylimah, Maslamah ibn Habib of the Banu Hanifa, an old man who had studied Christianity in Jerusalem and held the respect of all al-Yamama, came to Madinah carried into the mosque under fine cloth like a king, and offered to follow the Prophet ﷺ if he were made his successor and given a share in prophethood. The Prophet ﷺ, holding a palm branch, told him he would not give him so much as that stick, that Allah would deal with him, and that he was certain Musaylimah was what he had been shown: two gold bracelets on his arms in a dream, which he blew on and which flew away, two liars who would come after him, al-Aswad al-Ansi and Musaylimah of al-Yamama. Home again, Musaylimah wrote as one messenger of Allah to another that the matter was divided between them, half to the Quraysh and half to him, and the Prophet ﷺ told his two envoys that but for the custom that envoys are not harmed he would have had them killed. Musaylimah recited a quran of his own, of frogs and elephants; a passing Arab told him to his face that they both knew he was a liar. When the Prophet ﷺ died the Banu Hanifa, the largest of the tribes that apostatised and the worst of them, rose behind Musaylimah, and in 12 AH Abu Bakr sent Khalid ibn al-Walid against them. The battle at Yamama was the bloodiest of the Ridda wars. Among the Muslims who marched was Wahshi, who had heard of the false prophet and asked Allah to let him take Musaylimah's life in exchange for what he had done to Hamzah at Uhud; he carried the same javelin, threw it as he had thrown it that day, and an Ansari's sword struck from the other side in the same moment, so that he never knew which of them had killed Musaylimah. Among the dead were Abu Hudhayfah ibn Utbah, who had said after Badr that he would not feel safe from one sentence he had spoken there until Allah accepted him as a martyr, and Ukasha ibn Mihsan, who fell still carrying the sword that had been a stick of wood in his hand at Badr.

Placed here because: Ep. 96: "Musaylimah was eventually killed in the Wars of Ridda [12 AH] by none other than Wahshi." The one battle after the Prophet ﷺ's death whose threads the lectures follow.