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Between Safa and Marwah: What Hajar's Search Still Asks of You
The sa'y between Safa and Marwah retells a mother's search for water in an empty valley. Here is Hajar's story, how the rite is performed today, and what her trust and effort still ask of anyone who walks it.
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- The Quran Gallery team
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- 6 min read
Two low hills sit inside the Grand Mosque today, joined by a long covered gallery. Pilgrims walk between them seven times — briskly across the middle stretch, at an ordinary pace on either side — in a rite called sa’y, “the striving.” Every lap of it retells a single story: a mother, an infant son, and an empty valley with no water in it.
Ibn ‘Abbas narrated the story as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) told it. Ibrahim (peace be upon him) brought Hajar and their infant son Isma’il to Makkah and left them beside a tree near where the Kaaba would later stand, with nothing but a bag of dates and a skin of water. There was no one else in the valley, and no water besides what he had left them.
When Hajar realized Ibrahim intended to walk away, she followed him and asked, more than once, “Where are you going, leaving us in this valley where there is no one and nothing?” He did not turn to answer. Finally she asked him directly: “Did Allah command you to do this?” He said, “Yes.” She said, “Then He will not let us be lost” — and went back to her son.
The water ran out. Hajar watched Isma’il writhing from thirst and could not bear to look at him, so she climbed the nearest hill, Safa, and searched the valley for anyone in sight. Seeing no one, she went down, crossed the valley floor at a run, and climbed Marwah to look again. She did this seven times. It is recorded on printed page 3/1227 of — Sahih al-Bukhari’s Book of the Prophets — that the Prophet said of this: “That is why people run between them.”
On the seventh crossing she heard a voice and found the angel scraping at the ground with his heel until water rose from it. She began cupping it into her waterskin with her hands, and the Prophet added, on the same page, that had she left the spring alone it would have kept flowing on the surface undisturbed — but she was drawing from it out of need, so it settled into what became a well: Zamzam, which has not stopped flowing since.
Generations after Hajar’s search, the Qur’an named her running a rite for everyone who comes to that valley:
۞ إِنَّ ٱلصَّفَا وَٱلْمَرْوَةَ مِن شَعَآئِرِ ٱللَّهِ ۖ فَمَنْ حَجَّ ٱلْبَيْتَ أَوِ ٱعْتَمَرَ فَلَا جُنَاحَ عَلَيْهِ أَن يَطَّوَّفَ بِهِمَا ۚ وَمَن تَطَوَّعَ خَيْرًا فَإِنَّ ٱللَّهَ شَاكِرٌ عَلِيمٌ “Indeed, Safa and Marwah are among the symbols of Allah. So whoever makes Hajj to the House or performs ‘umrah, there is no blame on him if he walks between them. And whoever volunteers good — then indeed, Allah is Appreciative and Knowing.”
A private search for water in an empty valley became a public act of worship, repeated by every pilgrim who has entered that valley since — carrying no memory of Hajar’s thirst, only the instruction to retrace her steps.
Jabir ibn ‘Abdillah’s long description of the Prophet’s own hajj records exactly how he performed the sa’y, in the words he recited at each hill. Approaching Safa, he recited the same verse — “Indeed, Safa and Marwah are among the symbols of Allah” — then added, “I begin with what Allah began with,” and climbed Safa first. It is recorded on printed page 2/886 of — Sahih Muslim’s chapter on the Prophet’s hajj — that once he could see the Kaaba from the hill, he faced the qiblah and said:
لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ. لَهُ الْمُلْكُ وَلَهُ الْحَمْدُ وَهُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ. لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللَّهُ وَحْدَهُ. أَنْجَزَ وَعْدَهُ. وَنَصَرَ عَبْدَهُ. وَهَزَمَ الْأَحْزَابَ وَحْدَهُ “There is no god but Allah alone, with no partner. His is the dominion and His is the praise, and He is over all things capable. There is no god but Allah alone. He fulfilled His promise, gave victory to His servant, and defeated the confederates alone.”
The same page records that he made du’a between each repetition, and said all of it three times before descending toward Marwah — walking at his ordinary pace until the floor of the valley, running there, then walking again as he climbed toward Marwah, where he repeated the same recitation and du’a. Today’s markers — the two green lights inside the gallery — trace exactly that stretch of the valley floor, and only men are asked to quicken their pace across it; women walk it throughout at their ordinary pace.
Sa’y is not measured by how quickly it is finished. Its shape came from an act that took a mother seven anxious crossings to complete — walking it at speed empties it of what it is for.
Hajar’s answer to Ibrahim — “Then He will not let us be lost” — was not passivity. She said it and then still climbed Safa, still crossed the valley, still searched a second hill, seven times over, before any water appeared. Her trust in Allah’s decree and her own effort were not two competing options; they were the same act, seen from two sides. The Qur’an states this as a general principle, not only Hajar’s case:
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُوٓا۟ إِن تَنصُرُوا۟ ٱللَّهَ يَنصُرْكُمْ وَيُثَبِّتْ أَقْدَامَكُمْ “O you who have believed, if you support Allah, He will support you and plant your feet firmly.”
The sa’y asks the same question of everyone who walks it: are you waiting for help to arrive, or are you climbing the hill in front of you while you wait for it? Hajar did not know a spring lay under her feet. She searched anyway, because searching was what trusting Allah looked like in that valley.
Walking between Safa and Marwah is also a small, repeated act of following an instruction whose full reasoning a pilgrim is not given. Why these two hills, at this pace, seven times, starting here and ending there — the rite does not explain itself; it simply asks to be performed as it was shown. That is worth sitting with as you walk it: how much of your own obedience waits for an explanation before it moves, and how much of it can move first, the way Hajar did when she still had no water and no answer, only a decree she trusted.
It is also worth remembering, at each hill, that what looked to Hajar like a search that might fail became a spring that has not run dry in thousands of years — and that the effort she made in private, seen by no one else in that valley, is now repeated by pilgrims from every part of the earth, at every hour of the year. Nothing offered to Allah in earnest is wasted, even when the person offering it cannot yet see where it leads.
The dhikr recited at Safa and Marwah is one you can keep saying long after your feet leave that valley. Build it — and the rest of your daily remembrance — into a routine with Quran Gallery’s adhkar.