The Talbiyah is built on a single Arabic word, labbayk, an intensive form meaning here I am, at your service, doubled and repeated until it becomes a rhythm. The full formula praises God, declares that praise, favour and sovereignty belong to him, and insists twice that he has no partner. Muslim tradition hears in it the answer to a very old summons. The Quran, in Surat al-Hajj, commands Abraham to proclaim the pilgrimage among humankind, and the pilgrims' chant is understood as the response to that proclamation, each pilgrim personally answering a call issued at the foundation of the sanctuary.
The wording used by the Prophet Muhammad on his own pilgrimage is transmitted in the canonical hadith collections, including Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, and the schools of law preserve it with only minor variations. Because the formula is short, rhythmic and repeated for days, it carries the theology of the Hajj in a form the body learns, the affirmation of God's absolute oneness spoken not as doctrine but as a traveller's answer at the door. Shia practice adds no essential difference, and the chant belongs equally to the lesser pilgrimage, the Umrah, so that at every season of the year some voice somewhere is answering.