Hajj Preparation: Rites from Iḥrām to the Tenth Day

Occasion: transcript of a lecture delivered at the American Imams Academy (AIA) on May 2, 2026, the third session in a series preparing a group for Hajj.Source: transcript of a recorded lecture by Dr. Ahmed Abouseif — watch the original video on YouTube

My dear brothers and sisters, this is the third session, God willing. I do not want to call it the last one, because we will do more and more together on our journey toward Hajj. Today we will share the slides and see together what we need to do. We will go through the topic under the heading of the journey of faith and the paths of the scholars. There may be some differences among the scholars along the way, but as usual we will take Hajj step by step. We ask Allah to accept from all of us.

Why we are going

Before we begin the actions, we need to go back to what we covered before: the purposes of Hajj. The first purpose is the sincere worship of Allah, glory be to Him: to learn how to respect the oneness of Allah and to show our humility when we return to Him. We return to the very place where the Prophet Muḥammad began his call, and where, before him, Ibrāhīm (peace be upon him) was building the pillars and the walls of the House, with Ismāʿīl (peace be upon him) helping him. We can go back and ask what effort we ourselves give for Islam when we compare our actions with what Hājar did. We can ask how we struggle with the devil, and the simple example is Ibrāhīm, when the devil came to whisper to him to turn away from Allah's command and tried to stop him from slaughtering his son. Allah shows us the standing of Ibrāhīm, who submitted himself and his son for the sake of Allah.

Then there is the benefit of Hajj as the unity of the Muslim community. We see what unity means, and how we can show the whole world the strength of the Muslim community when we come together and exchange our experiences and information, our languages, our cultures and our habits, each depending on the background we come from and on what we face when we meet the people on the Hajj journey. All of this comes together to build a new mentality in the Muslim. Thank God.

What Hajj is

So far that was our first slide. The next one is the standing of Hajj in Islam: it is one of the pillars of Islam, as we explained in the last sessions when we began preparing ourselves for this great journey.

What does the word mean in the Arabic language? It is like intention and direction toward something, with a special intention and at a special, exact time that Allah has decided for us. The times begin earlier, but the time of performing Hajj itself starts on the eighth day. We will come to the details.

The slide translates the description of the Hajj as "accepted", but the Arabic word actually comes from righteousness: it carries the description of the righteous.^[1] That means I bring all of my righteousness, my qualification, my faith, my identity and my dignity, and I show Allah, glory be to Him, what kind of purity I have in my heart and my mind. During all of that time I am showing Allah the best I have, my righteousness. That is the first point. The second is acceptance: when I have shown Allah my righteousness, whether He accepts from me or not depends on my intention, my performance, and all of these things together.

We are the guests of Allah. We ask Allah to help us reach that place, and not to let anything stop us from going. Usually a host shows his generosity to the people he has invited, and shows them what kind of generosity he can give. If we are the guests of Allah, glory be to Him, then for sure we will receive that hospitality in the best way, from the Creator of the whole world and the Forgiver of sinners. We ask Allah to forgive us.

Forgiveness

We are speaking now about one of the main goals of a Muslim in his whole life: asking Allah to forgive us. Imagine the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ himself. Look at his standing, and then at what he tells us: that he seeks Allah's forgiveness every single day, more than seventy times.^[2] If the Prophet ﷺ, with his position in prophethood, seeks forgiveness from Allah more than seventy times a day, what about me? What about you? What about everybody here?

We have two situations here that may seem to stand opposite each other. The first: when the Prophet ﷺ used to go to the bathroom, once he got out of it he taught us, he commanded us, to say a word of seeking forgiveness.^[3] It is like seeking forgiveness because, in the bathroom, I could not repent or remember Allah or repeat the word of Allah with my tongue. After I finish whatever I was doing there, as soon as I come out, I seek Allah's forgiveness. This is the word the Prophet ﷺ taught us to say every time we leave the bathroom.

And even the prayer. Imagine: we are in the prayer, and the moment we finish we start immediately to repeat the words of forgiveness. The Prophet ﷺ used to say it three times after the prayer.^[4] What did he do? He obeyed Allah. He performed the prayer. He did nothing wrong. Why is he asking Allah for forgiveness after performing the prayer? Because maybe there was some shortcoming during the prayer, and for that reason we ask Allah to forgive us. Seeking forgiveness is the main goal in our life: we ask Allah to forgive the sins we committed before and the ones we did.

The second point, as we speak about the virtue of that day: Allah mentioned in a hadith, a different one, that this is the best day, the day on which Allah forgives people and frees their necks from the Fire.^[5] It is the merciful day, the day of mercy, as Allah, glory be to Him, mentioned through the hadith of the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ. As we said before about the importance of Hajj in our lives, through it we know the meaning of servitude to Allah, we renew our faith, and we have the unity of the community.

Who is obliged to go

Next come the conditions for the obligation. The first is Islam: to be a Muslim in order to perform Hajj. The third is sanity, to be a person of sound mind, and the fourth is capability. When we talk about capability we find the financial capability and the physical capability. If somebody is weak, or poor and cannot finance it, we have an excuse for those people. It is a reasonable excuse: they may avoid doing it, because Allah holds them to the position they are already in.

Now the women. If she has no mahram, someone with her such as a husband, a father, a son, a brother, a relative whom she can never marry, then the majority of the scholars said she has an excuse for not going, and Allah will excuse her. But, thank God, we also find another concept now, which looks to safe companionship. What does that mean? When we are sure, God willing, that we are going by a safe way and coming back by a safe way, and that we have good people around us, then we are safe with them. This depends on conditions and on the situation of each of us: somebody may have a group of friends, and nobody can cheat the others, and we feel safe during the trip from here to there and back again. We will be safe, God willing, and we can protect ourselves if we need that kind of protection. With these words she can go, God willing, and we consider each person's situation. Thank God, we have had many trials of this before: we had a number of sisters, and I do not want to say they faced dangers, but they faced problems during the trip, and thank God they found us around them, protecting them and working hard to fix whatever problem they faced. Thank God, we can do something like that again.

Iḥrām

What are the steps of Hajj? The steps of performing Hajj make a complete journey, God willing. We begin, as we explained before, with iḥrām, and we said it has two things: the clothes of iḥrām and the intention of iḥrām. The clothes we can wear from anywhere. If our trip is going through Jeddah, then at that time we are passing the limit, the mīqāt, while flying. We can wear the clothes before, or we can put them on in the airplane.

As we mentioned before, there is also a new understanding of the mīqāt. It is not actually new, but it is a modern opinion. We have been hearing it for tens of years, and it has come out again recently because of the need. It is really hard now, especially since the airlines have been making the seats closer and the bathroom is really closer too, which is a way of getting more money from the flight. Anyway, based on this new position we hear that opinion coming back, to deal with modern issues: can we put on the iḥrām from some other place, because we are not passing the mīqāt on foot or by car, but flying? They differentiate between flying over Saudi Arabia and walking or traveling by other means of transport. Anyway, God willing, Allah will make it easy for us and keep us safe. We need to have our iḥrām clothes ready before going there, and all of us will do that, God willing.

I am not sure what your destination will be: whether you will have a transit before going to Jeddah, or whether some of us will go to Medina first. I am not sure of the plan for the trip, but we will try to do our best, and we will keep in contact through the WhatsApp group, or Telegram, or whatever is the best way to contact each other. That is for the iḥrām, which will come at the place where we will not try to pass the point without it, God willing.

Arriving in Makkah: the three types and the ṭawāf

There are three types. The first thing we do when we reach Makkah is a ṭawāf, and we need to differentiate between two things: the ṭawāf of arrival, and the ṭawāf of ʿUmrah.^[6] The arrival ṭawāf is for people who are not making ʿUmrah. Take people who come to Makkah with no other reason than being in Makkah, coming for the time of Hajj without having started it yet. They will not go out tomorrow, but they perform the ṭawāf just to be in Makkah, as a greeting of the House. That is what the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ used to teach the Companions.

But we, most of us, I can say all of us, will do the third type. It means we make ʿUmrah, and after that we release ourselves from iḥrām, up to the eighth day. During that time we are free to do whatever we want, and on the eighth day we start a new journey. So what I do on arrival is to make ʿUmrah. Some scholars said you can combine the two, because the starting point is the same: once you come to Makkah, you make the ṭawāf with the intention of the ʿUmrah, and you can make the condition.

As for the arrival ṭawāf, the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ is that it is not obligatory and not commanded for people when they come. Some scholars made it obligatory or commanded, and we need to differentiate between what is obligatory and what is not. It is not our issue right now, but some of them made it commanded because it is a greeting to the House of Allah, glory be to Him. They looked at the standing of the Kaʿbah, what it deserves from people, and what people need to do to respect that standing. At the end of the day, the bottom line here is that you can combine the two. It is fine to have them in one round, and the other follows after this one.

How do we perform it? We explained that when we explained the actions of ʿUmrah. We start by raising our right hand, pointing toward the Black Stone if we are far away.^[7] Otherwise, if somebody has the chance to kiss it and start from that point, which I do not want to call impossible but is really hard now, then if somebody can do it, he may do it. And we say the simple supplication. Then we go on with our first round, up to coming back to the beginning, the last of the same wall. Once we reach the beginning of that wall, we repeat the same words, and we come back to say it for the second, the third, the fourth, the fifth, the sixth, and the seventh. At that point we go directly on, and we need to understand that we will make two kinds of it, one of them after the one thing and the other one after the other. We will talk about that in a while, God willing.^[8]

Then, as we also explained, we arrive at the mountain of Ṣafā, facing, and we say a verse there. We need to memorize this verse.^[9] And between Ṣafā and Marwah we begin our journey, our running between them, in laps. (At this point, someone asked: is it realistic to perform the ṭawāf on the tenth day? I said: we will come to this point. Your question is in my mind, don't worry about it. If you forgive me, I will answer it once I finish.)

Shaving or trimming after ʿUmrah

Now, once we are finishing, we have shortened our hair, as we mentioned before. I have seen people in the past shaving their heads after ʿUmrah. They have eight days, or seven days, one week, and the hair may come back out, so they can shave it again. Some of them do it on the sixth or the seventh of the month, just one day or two days before Hajj, so they have nothing on their heads. Even so, somebody says: I want to get the reward from Allah, glory be to Him, even if I am shaving nothing; I am just practicing the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. That is the issue here, and it is flexible. You can do whatever you want. If you shorten your hair, you will not be shortening your rewards from Allah. Wherever you feel comfortable, you can do it, God willing.

The free days: keep the mission

Once we have finished, we are released. We can get our clothes back and live normally, even go shopping. But this is one of the points to think about. Once we go for a mission, we do not want to distract ourselves with anything else. Our mission is to be with Allah for a few days, and we should not let anything distract us from it. You are going there to renew, to reform, to find again your soul and bring it back to your heart. You need to come back with a different personality, a different attitude, a different mentality and a different character, as a Muslim, a real Muslim who has submitted himself to Allah during that period of time. Nothing should distract me, nothing should make me busy with anything else. Try to feel the intensity with Allah, glory be to Him.

Let us come to the time between the ʿUmrah and Hajj, the free time, when you can do whatever you want as long as you are as close to Allah as you can be. One of the main things I want to remind ourselves of: do you have a mission regarding the Book of Allah? Are you planning to finish the whole muṣḥaf during the Hajj trip? Are you planning to open your muṣḥaf from the beginning to the end during that journey? Are you willing to memorize exact sūrahs during that journey? It does not matter what the goal is. What matters is whether you have an intention to connect yourself with the Book of Allah or not. One of the main goals of people going there is to finish the whole Qur’ān during that time. It will be a remarkable thing that you will never forget. When you read the Qur’ān again after you come back, God willing, you will still remember: I was reading this verse in this exact place, and so on.

Somebody may ask me: am I going to be busy with reading Qur’ān the whole time? If you do not have something to say, if you do not have a supplication to make or something like that, you can be busy with the Qur’ān. It is anything that gives you that tranquility, and we will come back to this point.

The eighth day: Minā

Now, on the eighth day, we are supposed to take our shower and perfume ourselves before putting on the iḥrām, and then, before the noon prayer of that day,^[20] we go from our hotel to Minā. We go there, and we find ourselves required to pray. Maybe we have already passed this slide; let us see. This is, as we said, the eighth day of the month, by the way.

The word for it comes from drinking, or from filling the body with water.^[10] Why is it called that? Because that area is desert, with no water over there, and on this day people used to bring the water to this area, so they called it the day of the water coming. Somebody else said it is like taking a break, preparing myself: I am going there to prepare myself, to stand by for the next day. Both explanations complete each other as the reasons for the name of that day.

There I pray the prayers shortened, each at its own time, not combined. The Prophet ﷺ did this. Why do we shorten the prayer if we are going to pray at its exact time? Allah, glory be to Him, assigned that for us to teach us how to use the time for free supplication as much as we can. Allah shortened the prayer for us to give us more chance for free supplication. Somebody will say: the prayer itself is a kind of supplication. But we still limit it to the exact words and exact actions that the Prophet ﷺ gave us, and other than that we are afraid to say whatever we like. Now you make supplication for yourself, your son, your daughter, your wife, your mother, your father, whatever. This is the free time for your personal supplication. Allah frees you even from the full prayer, so that you use the time for supplication.

Imagine that Allah gives me this chance, and somebody takes himself away from the position of supplication to drink cigarettes, or to vape, or whatever. Imagine what people do when they sit and talk to each other, spending their time on nothing. I saw somebody playing games during the time at Minā, wasting the time on nothing. I try to explain to you the meaning, the reason behind shortening the prayer on that day, just so that we understand that we have a big responsibility once we reach that place. Once we finish that time, we sleep during that night.

ʿArafah

The next day we are already heading on our road to ʿArafah. We are supposed to be in ʿArafah for part of the day and part of the night, regardless of how long we spend during the day or during the night. The Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ is to be there before the prayer, and to pray together.^[18] Some people go to the main masjid there, and by the way, part of this masjid is outside ʿArafah. We will have signs over there. If somebody insists on being there in that masjid, that is your availability.

But if we are coming as a group, we need to keep together, and we need to be with the imams. The imam who comes with you will explain to you what you are doing, and he will give you guidance, performing everything and having you do it like him. He will keep himself with you, even in the supplication, the recitation, the reading of the Qur’ān. All of that comes together as long as we are together. If somebody gets away, some of the people want to go to the mountain.^[11] There is no Sunnah in going there, and you have nothing over there; it is just a sign for the place, glory be to God. The Prophet ﷺ did not intentionally try to be there, up on the mountain. We will find many people, maybe sometimes fighting to get up there. Please: there is no reason to be there.

This place is a reminder of the Day of Judgment. We need to sit touching the floor, feeling that weather, and so on. Not to kill yourself, but to feel it. Allah is reminding us, kindly, about the position of the Day of Judgment: what will the position of the people be, what will they show at that time? We spend our time in supplication, reciting the Qur’ān, and so on, up to the time of the departure.^[19]

Muzdalifah

Once that time comes, which is the part of the night, we leave to go to Muzdalifah.^[12] We will have our buses, God willing. Somebody who likes to walk, that is up to them, but we will follow the direction of the guides over there. With that rush of people, that number of people, we are not sure you would be guided to reach your place safely and at the same time on time with the schedule of the people. If we are planning something, we need to have everybody coming together, God willing. Otherwise, glory be to God, we will go and pray, regardless of when we arrive. It does not matter when we arrive at that place: once we reach it, at that time, God willing, we pray. We combine the two prayers there, and we stay during the whole night.

Here we have a point on which there is a difference. The majority say we need to stay up to the morning prayer, and after that go to Minā. But because of the rush and that big number of people, we have different opinions now. Some of the scholars excused people to go to Minā after the middle of the night, apparently.^[13] I do recommend, for myself, if I have the chance, that I will not do that, unless I am required to because of the numbers of people, the organizing by the authorities over there, or the organization's position. Then we follow the direction. But if we have a chance, we will stay during the night up to the time of the morning prayer. My dear brothers and sisters, some of us perform this action once in a whole lifetime, one time only; otherwise we have no other chance to do it. For that reason we need to make it perfect as much as we can.

The pebbles

God willing, we will count the pebbles, the small stones, the small rocks, whatever you call them, and collect those numbers. But before collecting them we need a plan: how many days we will stay after the tenth day. Some people stay two days, and some stay three days. ^[14] The numbers I gave were seven and twenty-one, twenty-one, and twenty-one; if we collect all of those numbers we find ourselves collecting seventy, or maybe seventy-one. If we go with twenty-one, twenty-one and seven, it means forty-nine. So either we collect forty-nine or we collect seventy.

If we find somebody selling them, I recommend not buying from anybody, unless we are really limited in movement. You will find them under your feet, God willing, and you can pick them up yourself. This is the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Some of the scholars recommended getting more than the number, because maybe you will miss something or lose some, so it is better to get more.

This also feels like a way of collecting the ways of facing and fighting the devil. It is a metaphor for our life. I am here in America, in the Dallas area. The devil comes here to whisper to me. I am not in Muzdalifah to find stones or rocks, but I am here to find my ways: to have good friends, to have a good position, to face that struggle with the devil. The ways are different, but the main goal is the same, to make us strong enough to face the whispering of the devil, or any kind of evil that he comes with.

The tenth day

Now we know the numbers. This is the tenth day, and we call that day by a name that is not mine; it was named so, and the Prophet Muḥammad ﷺ mentioned that name at that time.^[15] What do we do? We go directly to the place of the stoning, to the jamarāt. We call this one the last one, and we go to stone it. This is the first action we do on that day.

By the way, we need to do four things during that day. It is not obligatory to do all of them on the same day, but once we have done just three, we can release ourselves from the clothes of iḥrām. We are left with one prohibition only: intimacy with our spouses. That is the only condition, until we finish the last of the actions. Otherwise I can get out of my iḥrām, wear my normal clothes, and be free from all of that.

What is the first thing? The stoning of the jamrah, the first one. The second is shaving or shortening the hair. The third is the sacrifice, the slaughtering. We are giving the money so that somebody makes it on our behalf; we will not do it by ourselves. That means we are already done with this one even before going there, and it is easy to arrange. Anyway, the barber. The fourth is the ṭawāf in Makkah.^[21]

The fourth is the one some of you asked about, the same question everybody is asking: does it make sense to do it on that day? Personally, I did it before. I went directly. But I was free at that time, and I did not have a group, to be honest. It was the first time for me, and I insisted on doing it by myself, with nobody else with me: this is for Allah, my Hajj, mine. I did it by myself, and I actually rented a motorcycle. We achieved it, thank God. I made everything on time, came back to Minā and stayed there three days, and finished. If somebody can do it, that is fine. If somebody cannot, we can delay it, even after the days of Minā, going over there to make it.

Let us review together. We have four things that we do. The first is stoning the jamrah. The second is shortening or shaving. The third is the sacrifice. The fourth is the ṭawāf. Whatever you can do, we need to make three out of four. That is the minimum we can do on that day, God willing.

The days at Minā

After that we stay overnight in Minā. What are we doing over there? Nothing, except repeating our supplication, our remembrance, our reading of the Qur’ān, our private time with Allah, glory be to Him. And every single day we stone the jamarāt, all three of them.

Here is a difference between the opinions about when. We are supposed to go after the sun has passed its peak every day, but because of the rush and the number of people, we have an excuse from the scholars. Some of them give the excuse to go directly after the morning prayer, since it is a part of the day. Some of them said even after midnight of the day you can do it. I do recommend the time after noon; I am not accepting the other personally. Maybe you will find a different fatwa from somebody else that you will accept. Personally, I consider the day to start with the time after the sun has passed its peak. Not everybody goes there during the whole day. Some of the scholars said it is fine if you start after the time, because they compared this to the times of the prayers. Imagine you find somebody praying at, say, twelve o'clock, am I right? In America especially. Anyway, we can find somebody praying before the time, maybe an hour or an hour and a half before, and how are they doing that? Because of a fatwa which considers the time in one way or another, from after the time up to the time, depending on the opinions of the scholars, different thinking about the issue, and different narrations that came from the Prophet ﷺ or through those who narrated from him.

Anyway, if you have a chance to make it accurately according to the actions of the Prophet ﷺ, you can stay up to noon and then go. If the group is going and you cannot go alone, and you may miss the camp or the address, or you feel any kind of danger at that time, you have your reasonable excuse to go with the group whenever the imam decides.

Follow your imam

By the way, when you see the imam doing something, please, and I am not talking about myself, please do not start arguing with him, asking another shaykh: is that acceptable? Believe me, if something were not acceptable, why would the imam do it? Do you think the imam would change his religion for nothing? If the imam believes this is right, he will do it. If you see your imam doing something, follow him, as long as you trust that person as a wise person, a knowledgeable person. Follow his direction; do not argue with him. I really understand that sometimes we have different opinions, because of the differences among the scholars. But when you have an imam who really understands what the difference is, a knowledgeable person who is aware of that point and all of those things, why not follow him? Regardless of why he is doing it, he will explain it to you. And what he is doing, for sure he has a basis for it. For sure he has a reference from the Prophet ﷺ. Nobody goes over there to waste time and money on nothing and come back with a sin.

The farewell ṭawāf

Anyway, we will have stayed two or three days and nights, three nights actually, in Minā, and then we come back to Makkah, and we are supposed to make the farewell ṭawāf. We make it, God willing, during the day if we can. If we cannot do that on that day, we make it in a while, God willing. The last of the rites is the farewell ṭawāf. We have two opinions about it. One of them said this is one thing (the term is dropped in the transcript), but most say this is, I do not want to say obligatory, not like the others, but it is a commanded thing, a sincere, recommended action from the Prophet ﷺ.

Otherwise, thank God, I added over here some points on which the scholars had different opinions. You can review them for sure, and I think you can have the PowerPoint slides, God willing. All of these things we can accept, God willing, and you can come back with your questions.

Hajj as a reset

The last slide tells us that Hajj is not just a journey. It is a kind of reset of our lifestyle. We are trying to set up our lifestyle again. How can we learn that over there? We will have a lot of sessions. We will sit together hundreds of times, God willing, I promise you, and we will try to explain and understand the methodology of the Qur’ān for re-defining ourselves and coming back to Allah, glory be to Him, and all of these things, God willing.

Questions from the group

Right now I am going to stop sharing the slides and see what we have here together. This is the Q&A. I am sorry, are you seeing that? Can we say together? Oops. This is the first question here.

Is it realistic to do the ṭawāf on the tenth day? I hope I answered this question already. If somebody can do it, he can do it. If not, he can delay it to the second day or the third day, depending on your situation.

"I bought hand wash, shower gel and wipes for iḥrām that are listed as fragrance free, but they still have a smell, like a chemical or soap smell. Are they still permissible during iḥrām, as long as they are listed as fragrance free?" This is a new word for me; thank you for teaching me that word, "fragrance". Fragrance free. But I understand the meaning. Let us say our lifestyle is here, our lifestyle in this country. Can we try to get ourselves out of that, even a little bit? We do not want to stay stuck to what we are doing here. Every single time I am washing my hands, I am doing this and that. Let us try to have a simple lifestyle for a few days: taking a shower without anything else. A shower is for taking the smell out of our bodies and feeling comfortable. We do not need to have something like that. Everybody knows himself, and everybody has a different position and a different situation, and I cannot control other people. But as simple as we can be in dealing with those issues, I think it will be better for us, to keep the dignity of Hajj as Allah mentioned it for us.

Otherwise, as those things are listed as free of anything that would break the iḥrām, you can use it if it is listed that way. But who made that decision, the decision of listing those things? The normal smell of soap, or something that does not have a perfume, that does not attract people: the majority of the scholars said this is permissible. For me personally, I am trying to be exactly what the Prophet ﷺ recommended for the people, and I am trying to go with the traditional way as much as we can, God willing. I hope I answered; if not, just repeat your question.

A follow-up question (garbled in the transcript; the terms are dropped). The question was: if you want to do only one, then you do this, and if you do the other, I am sorry, then the first is that correct? I said: yes, you are correct. It is separate from the other, and it is a part of the other. As for what to say, the exact words, I will send them to you, to remind me. Send it to the group; God willing I will send you the exact words.^[16]

Did the Prophet ﷺ go up? I did not read that. Maybe I missed some information, but I did not find it. Anyway, I did not find it.^[17]

The order of the stoning. So the first stoning on the tenth day should be done before, and the stoning on the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth should be done after noon; and from the eleventh on, it may be before noon, depending on the fatwa. Personally I am comfortable with this opinion, because when we review the rules, we cannot kill ourselves over performing one action; we can do it in a different time or place. There are a lot of rules here, and there is an Arabic term in them. If somebody understands the Arabic language, he knows what it means: if you cannot catch something, or if you are going to miss something, the action that is supposed to be done before, if you realize it before. I do not know how to translate this one; it needs help. But anyway, why am I saying this? Because killing myself, or going in the rush time: if somebody is sick, if somebody cannot handle that kind of weather at that time, going after noon, especially when it is really hot, and he will come away with a migraine or something like that, he will lose the rest of his time because of one action. If he is going to lose the rest of the things because of one action, we will give him a reasonable excuse to go before. And right now, to be honest with you, most of the scholars give people the excuse to go before the time. But what I recommended is that if we can go after noon, or starting with that time, that will be better than anything else. If somebody is available to go after noon, and is strong enough, you are welcome.

Is there a specific supplication to be recited for each round? (The word after "round of" is garbled in the transcript.) No, we do not have an exact supplication for each round, first, second and so on. I do not want to say that we have to do it; it is recommended. There are recommended things from the Sunnah, and different kinds of supplications, God willing. During the rest of the time we can send you all of those things. I am going to pick a few very beneficial ones for the people and send them to you through the group, God willing.

A question about whether to do one rite before or after another (the terms are dropped in the transcript). Okay: before or after. By the way, is the farewell ṭawāf the last thing you need to do before leaving Makkah, the traditional way? If the bus is coming at three o'clock and we go at twelve to make the ṭawāf and come back directly to the bus or directly to the room to pick up our things and go to the bus. Some of the scholars even discussed: if I want to buy something after that, is it permissible or not? It is the last thing you are going to do. You cannot do anything else after it, whether before or after finishing the actions. Some of them said no, because you came for that exact purpose and you cannot do anything else; this is different. But I do not see a big issue here, because thank God we can consider it separate, and we can give people an excuse to do another kind of ṭawāf.

So water-only showers are acceptable? No, I did not say that. I said it is preferred. I did not say just "acceptable". It is a big difference between the two. The best way, the preferred one for me, is: if I can have a shower, or if I can have soap that has nothing in it, then good. If I have something that has some issues, I do not have to use it. To be safe, you go with the regular and normal one, and for sure we have something like that.

An anonymous attendee: is there any available transportation for performing the ṭawāf on the tenth day after throwing the pebbles? I am not sure. It is a really tough day, but I think someone can answer that better than me, for that day and that question.

Another question: should we shave our hair first, or wait until the sacrifice has been slaughtered? Okay, what about if the sacrifice is going to be slaughtered on the third day? You do not know. You already have a representative, and that representative will do whatever he sees as better on your behalf. Once you give the money and the time comes, you are already free from that point. Thank God, somebody else will do it. If he makes it wrongly, if he does it on a different day, after the time or before the time, that is his issue. You are released from this point, once you have given the money for it to be done for you.

Also, if we booked the sacrifice through (the name is dropped), how will we know when it has been slaughtered, so that we can release ourselves? As I mentioned before, once you give the money for the sacrifice, they have already taken the responsibility. They should do it on time, and you will not be asked about that. When can you release yourself? Once you have done the stoning, and the shaving or shortening, depending on your situation, and you have assigned the sacrifice through Nusuk to be made on your behalf, you have already made the three. You are not required to wait for any announcement or any kind of notification, unless we receive information that the Nusuk sacrifice is not done, that they have a problem, that they could not find a knife, something like that. Those things could happen, but it is practically impossible. The conclusion: once you have asked them to do it on your behalf, you are free from this point, and you need to take care of the rest of the three actions. Two of them for sure we will do on the same day, God willing, and the fourth we may be able to do on that day, or we can do it the next day or after that, God willing.

I think we are done with the questions. If somebody else has anything, I am here to answer.

--- ^[1]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the lecturer's wording is that the term on the slide, translated "accepted", comes from the Arabic root of righteousness (birr). The Arabic term itself (ḥajj mabrūr) is dropped in the transcript; it is restored from the lecturer's explanation. ^[2]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): this matches the hadith «إِنِّي لَأَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ وَأَتُوبُ إِلَيْهِ فِي الْيَوْمِ أَكْثَرَ مِنْ سَبْعِينَ مَرَّةً», narrated by al-Bukhārī. The lecturer gave only the sense. ^[3]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript drops the Arabic word; «غُفْرَانَكَ» is restored from the lecturer's explanation (narrated by Abū Dāwūd and al-Tirmidhī, from ʿĀʾishah). ^[4]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): narrated by Muslim from Thawbān: the Prophet ﷺ would say «أَسْتَغْفِرُ اللَّهَ» three times after the prayer. The Arabic is dropped in the transcript. ^[5]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the name of the day is dropped in the transcript. The lecturer's description (the best day, forgiveness, freeing necks from the Fire) matches the hadith of the Day of ʿArafah narrated by Muslim from ʿĀʾishah, «مَا مِنْ يَوْمٍ أَكْثَرَ مِنْ أَنْ يُعْتِقَ اللَّهُ فِيهِ عَبْدًا مِنَ النَّارِ مِنْ يَوْمِ عَرَفَةَ». This link is the editor's inference; the lecturer said only "a hadith". ^[6]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): both Arabic terms are dropped in the transcript. Names are restored from the lecturer's description (the arrival ṭawāf, ṭawāf al-qudūm, and the ṭawāf of ʿUmrah). The passage is partly garbled; the sense is given as closely as it can be recovered. ^[7]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript drops the name; "the Black Stone" is restored from the lecturer's description of pointing and kissing. ^[8]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the noun after "two kinds of" is dropped in the transcript, and it does not say what the two follow, and the lecturer did not return to the subject in the recording. Nothing is added here. ^[9]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript has only "we need to memorize this verse". It is identified from the context of the saʿy as Sūrat al-Baqarah 2:158, ﴿إِنَّ الصَّفَا وَالْمَرْوَةَ مِن شَعَائِرِ اللَّهِ﴾; this is the editor's identification, not the lecturer's wording. ^[10]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the name of the day is dropped; from the explanation (drinking and watering, or taking a rest and preparing) it is the day of Tarwiyah. ^[11]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the name of the mountain is dropped in the transcript (Jabal al-Raḥmah is the likely referent) and is not stated here. ^[12]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the name of the place is dropped in the transcript. The order of events given (leaving ʿArafah at night, staying the night, then Minā) places it at Muzdalifah. ^[13]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript reads "after the mid of the month", which is most plausibly an ASR error for after the middle of the night. The lecturer expresses a personal preference, not a ruling. ^[14]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the lecturer's arithmetic is garbled in the transcript. Only the totals he reached (forty-nine, or seventy) are stated here as his; the breakdown into seven and twenty-one is as he said it, but the way it is attached to two days or three days is not recoverable with certainty. ^[15]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the name is dropped in the transcript, and who gave the name is dropped too. The lecturer's remark fits the Day of Sacrifice, the tenth day; the name itself is not restated here. ^[16]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the question and the answer are garbled in the transcript, and the terms they refer to are dropped. Only what is clearly stated is kept. ^[17]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript does not say what the Prophet ﷺ is asked to have gone up to. It is not guessed here. ^[18]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript reads "be there before ... and praying ... together" with the prayer names dropped. "The noon prayer" is the editor's restoration from the usual Sunnah and is not certain from the audio. ^[19]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the time word is dropped in the transcript ("up to the time of the ..."). Sunset is the likely referent but is not stated here. ^[20]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript reads "before the z of ... of the eighth day"; "the noon prayer" is the editor's restoration and is not certain from the audio. The same applies to "the morning prayer" at Muzdalifah and to the stoning times at Minā (after noon, after the dawn prayer), where the transcript's terms are cut off. ^[21]: Editor's note (توثيق المحرر): the transcript drops the fourth item ("What is the fourth one? This is that day"). The ṭawāf is restored from the questions about "doing it on the tenth day" and from the "three out of four" that follows; it is not the lecturer's audible wording.