The Standing on the Plain of ʿArafah

The Standing on the Plain of ʿArafah
By Dr. Mohammad Akram Nadwī
Oxford, UK
Translated by Dr. Abu Zayd

Standing in ʿArafah is ṣalāh just as ṭawāf is ṣalāh, for Ḥajj combines all forms of ṣalāh together.

Ṣalāh essentially signifies entry into the presence of God. When an ordinary person comes before a powerful king into his majesty’s immediate presence, he becomes apprehensive and humbled. When that same person becomes removed and distant from his majesty’s presence, then that sense of humility becomes diminished or even absent. In ṭawāf (circumambulation around the Kaʿbah), God’s presence is ever present in the pilgrim’s mind. In the plain of ʿArafah, which stands at the very edge of the God’s sacred precincts, the pilgrim is obedient and present before God. His sense of entering into God’s presence is full of humility and compliance. Ṭawāf and the standing of ʿArafah cannot take place except in their designated places. Ṣalāh, on the other hand, is not restricted to God’s sacred precincts but is obligatory in every piece of God’s earth. Because of that, that same sense of awareness and presence before God is only realized after great struggle and effort. It only occurs when the worshiper forces himself to be restricted to specific standing, bowing, prostrating, reciting, glorifying God, and abstaining from food, drink and speech. These restrictions and conditions help to remind him of his standing in the presence of God and to develop the required sense of awareness and obedience.

Standing in ʿArafah encompasses many aspects of coming into the presence of God with a sense of penitence and submissiveness. The following are its most salient aspects:

1. It represents standing at the doors of God. Through these doors the pilgrim enters the sacred precincts. He stays standing, patiently waiting for the bulk of the day until permission is granted to him after sunset to enter the first portion of the sacred grounds. He does so remembering God profusely, and enters the ground of Muzdalifah. This is like standing at the entrance to the royal court of the king, as the person disciplines himself to become submissive, humble, devout and compliant towards the king.

2. The location is a deep reminder of the beloved. Which beloved could possibly be dearer than the Lord of the worlds, the Ever-Merciful and Ever-Compassionate One? Poets of old have frequently stood before the physical traces and reminders of their lovers to compile memorable verses, as Imraʾ al-Qays [verse translation: Paul Smith] did in his opening ode:
Friends, let us stop, at the remembrance of my beloved, be weeping . . .
She stayed between Dakhūl and Ḥawmal, where sands are curving.
At Tūḍiḥ and Miqrāt, her encampment still has not been erased . . .
For when south wind blows over it, north wind the sand is sweeping.

3. The place represents enjoying the traces of the beloved. God made ʿArafah one of His symbols. The worshipper moves from these symbols and rites to ascend onto God the Exalted. ʿAntarah b. Shaddād [verse translation: James Montgomery] states in his ode:
Did poetry die in its war with the poets?
Is this where ʿAblah walked? Think!
The ruins were deaf—refused to reply,
Then shouted out in a foreign tongue.
My came tried to withdraw—
I couldn’t move,
Ranting at the charred stones.
“Speak. Live. Prosper.
Here in Jiwā ʿAblah dwelled,
A timid gazelle, doe eyes,
Sweet smile, soft neck.”
I reigned in my camel, big as a fort—
I needed to weep, needed the shame.

Labīd b. Abī Rabīʿah [verse translation: Michael Sells] states:
I stopped to question them.
How is one to question
Deaf, immutable,
Inarticulate stones?