The Standing Outside Mecca That Neither Sacrifice nor Prayer Can Replace

The ninth of Dhu al-Hijjah, the day before Eid al-Adha, is the Day of Arafah, named for the plain outside Mecca where pilgrims performing Hajj gather from noon until sunset in what tradition holds to be the single rite without which the pilgrimage itself is not valid, a standing rather than a set of words or actions. Muslim tradition places Muhammad's Farewell Sermon at this spot on this day during his final pilgrimage, an address later sources treat as a summary statement of the faith's core obligations delivered at what its own audience understood to be the end of his life.

For the far larger number of Muslims not performing Hajj in a given year, the day is kept differently, as a recommended voluntary fast rather than a day of standing. Hadith literature records the fast as believed to expiate the sins of the year that has passed and the year to come, a scope unusually generous for a single day's fast and one of the reasons the day is observed as widely as it is outside Mecca even though the rite that gives it its name, the standing itself, can only be performed by those physically present on the plain. The day's dual character, an obligatory rite for those at Arafat and a voluntary fast for everyone else, is one reason the Encyclopaedia of Islam treats it as a useful case for showing how a single date can carry two distinct levels of religious obligation depending entirely on where the person marking it happens to be standing that year.