HISTORY OF HAJJ

HISTORY OF HAJJ Witnessing God’s Plan A CCORDING to the Bible, the Prophet Abraham was born ten generations after the Prophet Noah. God caused a tradition of guidance to ensue from him and chose him for raising a new nation. This nation, it was planned, would be imbued with a spirit of righteousness, and it would assist the Final Prophet in the accomplishment of his mission: When his Lord tested Abraham with certain commands and he fulfilled them, He said, ‘I will make you a leader of men.’ (2: 124) The mission of other prophets involved no more than full conveyance of the message entrusted to them. The Prophet with whom the chain of prophethood was to end, however, had to fulfill one more duty: that of establishing the ideological dominance of the true religion on earth: He is the One who has sent His Messenger with guidance and the true religion, so that He may have it prevail over all [other] religions. (48: 28) Only then could the preservation of the last divine Scripture to be revealed to human beings be ensured. The possibility of its being destroyed would be eliminated for all time (48: 28). Other prophets were sent to preach the true religion, but the Final Prophet was enjoined to establish its ideological supremacy as well. For this purpose, a group of companions was required consisting of people endowed with the highest human qualities, fit to assist the Prophet in implementing the divine scheme. Abraham, in bringing his wife Hagar and son Ishmael to the uncultivated desert town of ancient Makkah and settling there, was laying the foundations for such a community. There, far from civilization, in simple, natural surroundings, a people would emerge from Abraham’s progeny who would be imbued with the highest human qualities; who would view things with clear and objective vision; whose actions would conform to their words; who would be ready to lay down their lives and properties for something they knew to be true. A people as firm as the mountains which surrounded them, as boundless as the vast desert in which they roamed. When this “finest community” had been raised from the barrenness of the desert, God sent the Messenger among them for whom Abraham had prayed at the time of the construction of the Kabah. God had willed the birth of a prophet to Abraham’s wife Sarah. This prophet-son was born during Abraham’s lifetime and was called Isaac. It took two thousand years to realize the prayer of Abraham that a