Surah Al-Hajj, The Pilgrimage

Surah 22 · 78 verses · revealed at Medina

Al-Hajj is the only surah named after the pilgrimage, and it carries the call that Abraham was told to proclaim so that people would come from every distant road.

Scholars have never agreed on where it belongs. Parts of it read as Meccan and parts as Medinan, and some have said it was revealed partly on journeys and partly at home, by day and by night. The mixture is unusual enough that it is often mentioned as a case where the neat division between the two periods does not hold.

It contains the verse generally taken to be the first permission given to fight — granted, it says, to those who had been wronged and driven from their homes for no reason other than saying that God is their Lord. The permission is immediately tied to a purpose: that places of worship of every kind, monasteries and churches and synagogues among them, should not be pulled down.

Its opening is one of the most frightening passages in the book, describing the hour as something that would make a nursing mother forget the child at her breast. Its middle is an argument for the resurrection built on what a person can watch happen — a seed in dead ground, a body that begins as dust.

On the pilgrimage itself it is practical, dealing with the animals offered, with the ancient House, and with the state of mind required. It says that neither the meat nor the blood of the offerings reaches God, but that consciousness of Him does.

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