The pilgrimage cannot be performed by proxy by Sunnī Muslims, but is allowed by the Shīʿahs, and it is by both considered a meritorious act to pay the expenses of one who cannot afford to perform it. But if a Muḥammadan on his death-bed bequeath a sum of money to be paid to a certain person to perform the pilgrimage, it is considered to satisfy the claims of the Muslim law. If a Muslim have the means of performing the pilgrimage, and omit to do so, its omission is equal to a kabīrah, or mortal sin.
According to the saying of the Prophet (Mishkāt, book xi. ch. 1), the merits of a pilgrimage to Makkah are very great:—
“He who makes a pilgrimage for God’s sake, and does not talk loosely, nor act wickedly, shall return as pure from sin as the day on which he was born.” “Verily, they (the ḥajj and the ʿumrah) put away poverty and sin like the fires of a forge removes dross. The reward of a pilgrimage is paradise.” “When you see a pilgrim, salute and embrace him, and request him to ask pardon of God for you, for his own sins have been forgiven and his supplications will be accepted.”
For a philological and technical explanation of the following terms which occur in this account of the ḥajj, refer to the words as they occur in this dictionary: [ʿARAFAH], [AYYAMU ʾT-TASHRIQ], [HAJARU ʾL-ASWAD], [HAJI], [IHRAM], [MARWAH], [MASJIDU ʾL-HARAM], [MAQAMU IBRAHIM], [MAHRAM], [MIQAT], MUZDALIFAH, [TAWAF], [ʿUMRAH], [RAMYU ʾL-JIMAR], [ZAMZAM], [TALBIYAH], [RUKNU ʾL-YAMANI], [TARWIYAH], [KHUTBAH], [ʿIDU ʾL-AZHA], [SAFA].
The Muslim who has performed the pilgrimage is called a ḥājī, which title he retains, e.g. Ḥājī Qāsim, the Pilgrim Qāsim.
Only five Englishmen are known to have visited Makkah, and to have witnessed the ceremonies of the pilgrimage:—Joseph Pitts, of Exeter, A.D. 1678; John Lewis Burckhardt, A.D. 1814; Lieutenant Richard Burton, of the Bombay Army, A.D. 1853; Mr. H. Bicknell, A.D. 1862; Mr. T. F. Keane, 1880. The narratives of each of these “pilgrims” have been published. The first account in English of the visit of a European to Makkah, is that of Lodovico Bartema, a gentleman of Rome, who visited Makkah in 1503. His narrative was published in Willes and Eden’s Decades, A.D. 1555.
Professor Palmer (“Introduction” to the Qurʾān, p. liii.) says:—“The ceremonies of the pilgrimage could not be entirely done away with. The universal reverence of the Arab for the Kaabah was too favourable and obvious a means for uniting all the tribes into one confederation with one common purpose in view. The traditions of Abraham the father of their race, and the founder of Muhammad’s own religion, as he always declared it to be, no doubt gave the ancient temple a peculiar sanctity in the Prophet’s eyes, and although he first settled upon Jerusalem as his qiblah, he afterwards reverted to the Kaabah itself. Here, then, Muhammad found a shrine, to which, as well as at which, devotion had been paid from time immemorial; it was one thing which the scattered Arabian nation had in common—the one thing which gave them even the shadow of a national feeling; and to have dreamed of abolishing it, or even of diminishing the honours paid to it, would have been madness and ruin to his enterprise. He therefore did the next best thing, he cleared it of idols and dedicated it to the service of God.”
Mr. Stanley Lane Poole (Introduction to Lane’s Selections, p. lxxxiv.) remarks:—
“This same pilgrimage is often urged as a sign of Moḥammad’s tendency to superstition and even idolatry. It is asked how the destroyer of idols could have reconciled his conscience to the circuits of the Kaʿbah and the veneration of the black stone covered with adoring kisses. The rites of the pilgrimage cannot certainly be defended against the charge of superstition; but it is easy to see why Moḥammad enjoined them. They were hallowed to him by the memories of his ancestors, who had been the guardians of the sacred temple, and by the traditional reverence of all his people; and besides this tie of association, which in itself was enough to make it impossible for him to do away with the rites, Moḥammad perceived that the worship in the Kaʿbah would prove of real value to his religion. He swept away the more idolatrous and immoral part of the ceremonies, but he retained the pilgrimage to Mekka and the old veneration of the temple for reasons of which it is impossible to dispute the wisdom. He well knew the consolidating effect of forming a centre to which his followers should gather; and hence he reasserted the sanctity of the black stone that ‘came down from heaven’; he ordained that everywhere throughout the world the Muslim should pray looking towards the Kaʿbah, and he enjoined him to make the pilgrimage thither. Mekka is to the Muslim what Jerusalem is to the Jew. It bears with it all the influence of centuries of associations. It carries the Muslim back to the cradle of his faith, the childhood of his prophet; it reminds him of the struggle between the old faith and the new, of the overthrow of the idols, and the establishment of the worship of the One God. And, most of all, it bids him remember that all his brother Muslims are worshipping towards the same sacred spot; that he is one of a great company of believers, united by one faith, filled with the same hopes, reverencing the same thing, worshipping the same God. Moḥammad showed his knowledge of the religious emotions in man when he preserved the sanctity of the temple of Islām.”
The Makkan pilgrimage admits of no other explanation than this, that the Prophet of Arabia found it expedient to compromise with Arabian idolatry. And hence we find the superstition and silly customs of the Ḥajj grafted on to a religion which professes to be both monotheistic in its principle, and iconoclastic in its practices.