Fast facts
- When
- 9 Dhul Hijjah, 10 AH (632 CE)
- Where
- The plain of ʿArafah (عرفة), near Makkah (مكة)
- Occasion
- The only hajj (حج) the Prophet ﷺ performed after its obligation
- Revealed that day
- Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:3, "this day I have perfected for you your religion"
- Recorded in
- Jabir's account of the Hajj, Sahih Muslim 1218
On this page
The setting
By the tenth year after the migration, Arabia was largely settled and the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ (محمد) performed hajj (حج). Tens of thousands travelled with him. Standing at ʿArafah (عرفة) on the ninth of Dhul Hijjah, he addressed them, with men stationed through the crowd to repeat his words outward so that those at the edges could hear.
He would be dead within about three months. Several things he said that day suggest he knew it, including the repeated question to the crowd asking whether he had delivered the message, and his instruction that those present should carry it to those who were absent.
What it abolished
The sermon is unusual in that much of it is subtraction. Standing before a society organised around lineage and vendetta, he cancelled the machinery of both.
- The blood feuds of the pre-Islamic period were declared void, and he began with a claim on his own family, placing the blood of his own relative first among those set aside.
- Riba (ربا), interest, was abolished, and again he started with what was owed to his own kin, cancelling the interest due to his uncle al-ʿAbbas (العباس) (رضي الله عنه).
- Superiority by descent was denied: no Arab has precedence over a non-Arab, nor a non-Arab over an Arab, nor a white person over a black one, except by taqwa (تقوى).
The pattern in the first two is worth noticing. He did not announce a rule and leave others to absorb the cost. He named his own family as the first to lose by it, which is the only version of such an announcement that a tribal society would have found credible.
What it protected
Against those cancellations he set a small number of things declared inviolable, using the sanctity of the day and the place as the measure: your blood, your property and your honour are sacred to one another as this day, this month and this city are sacred.
He gave an extended charge concerning women, instructing the men to fear Allah regarding them and describing the relationship as a mutual trust with rights running in both directions. He warned against returning to disbelief after him by striking one another’s necks, which reads differently once you know what followed in the decades after.
And he left the criterion for settling disputes: he was leaving behind what, if held to, would prevent them going astray. In the widely transmitted wordings this is the Book of Allah, with the Sunnah (السنة) named alongside it in others.
The verse revealed that day
During the standing at ʿArafah, part of a verse came down which the companions understood immediately as an ending.
الْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِي وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ الْإِسْلَامَ دِينًا"This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favour upon you, and approved Islam as your religion." (Sūrah al-Māʾidah 5:3)
It is reported that ʿUmar (عمر) (رضي الله عنه) wept on hearing it, and when asked why said that nothing follows completion except decline. The reading is exact: a thing declared perfected is a thing that has stopped being added to, and the revelation ended shortly after.
Why it still functions as a summary
The sermon is short and contains almost no ritual instruction. Given one last address to the largest audience of his life, the Prophet ﷺ spoke about debt, blood, lineage, the treatment of women, and the danger of the community turning on itself.
That selection is itself a statement of priorities, and it is the reason Islamic Divine System (IDS) treats the sermon as a compact summary of the religion rather than as a historical set piece. What a person says when there is no time left for anything else is usually what they actually held.
Frequently asked questions
Is there one authoritative text of the sermon?
No single complete text, and this is worth knowing. The sermon is preserved through several companion accounts which overlap heavily but differ in wording and in what each preserved. Jabir’s long narration of the Hajj in Sahih Muslim 1218 is the fullest single source. Widely circulated "full texts" online are usually composites assembled from several reports, sometimes with later material added.
Why is the abolition of interest given such prominence?
Because it was the financial architecture of the society being addressed, not a marginal practice. Cancelling it publicly, starting with his own uncle’s claims, made the ruling immediately real rather than aspirational.
Did the Prophet ﷺ perform hajj more than once?
Only once after it was made obligatory, which is why this is called the Farewell Pilgrimage. That single performance is the basis on which the rites of hajj are described in the books of fiqh (فقه), since the instruction was to take the rites from him.