For Whoever Is Able to Make the Journey

The pillar of Hajj is the fifth pillar, and there is something really wonderful in it, of all the pillars of Islam — even though all of these pillars are based on ability. Zakāt: if one is not able to pay it, one does not pay it. Fasting: if one is not able to fast, one does not fast. Even the prayer: if one is not able to pray standing, one prays reclining; if one is not able to pray reclining, one prays just with the eyes; if one is not able to do that, one prays in one's consciousness; and if one is not able to do that, one does not have to pray. And yet the Hajj is the only one where the Qurʾān says it: it is incumbent upon humankind, for Allah, to make the pilgrimage to His house — for whoever is able to make the journey.

Even though all the other pillars carry the same stipulation, in that one the stipulation is mentioned. And part of the reason for that is probably that the vast majority of Muslims will never be able to make the Hajj; so just the fact that it was mentioned in there gives a kind of ease with that. This is why the example given earlier, of students fasting even though they did not have to, fits here: people will fast even though they do not have to — they will still do it — whereas with the Hajj there is definitely a limitation, related to wealth, physical capacity, borders. Even now, for some people, they cannot: for a long time the Russian Muslims could not make the pilgrimage; the communist government would not let them make the pilgrimage. So there are limitations, and yet right there in the Qurʾān it says: for whoever is able to do it. The vast majority of Muslims will never do it. There are about one billion Muslims, by estimate; every year the maximum that the pilgrimage could be imagined reaching is maybe four million people. Right now it reaches about three million, and the pilgrims are packed — pressed together like this — doing some of the rites. There are so many people.

It is very interesting. Those who have made the pilgrimage three times, and made it over several times, still find it so. But the actual pilgrimage — the first thing about it — is related to the ritual of Ibrāhīm. The Muslims believe that Ibrāhīm took his son Ishmael to the valley of Bakkah, or Mecca — it is also called Bakkah in the Qurʾān, Mecca and Bakkah — and that he was commanded to leave his maidservant Hājar and Ishmael in that place. It is a barren place, and he left them there. What the tradition says is that Hājar, who was an African woman, the mother of Ishmael, went into a state of anxiety about the place, because there was no water, nothing; and she began to run between two hills, Ṣafā and Marwah, and she did that seven times, worrying about her baby; and on the seventh time the well of Zamzam emerged. There is a well there that still, to this day, feeds the pilgrims of Mecca. She drank from the well, and then some people who were passing through helped them, and they became established. And Ibrāhīm comes back when Ishmael is becoming a man, and builds with him the house in Mecca. This is what the tradition says: he builds with him the Kaʿbah.

Now, some say that the Kaʿbah was first built by Adam, and some say that Adam and Ḥawwāʾ met on the plain of ʿArafah — the word ʿarafa means to recognise — and that it is where they recognised each other on the earth, after the garden. Allah knows best about those things. But the basic idea is that the Kaʿbah was the first house established for the worship of one God only, and that Ibrāhīm built the house. It is a cube, a very simple structure, with nothing in it.