The Farewell Sermon: what it actually says, and where each line comes from

The Farewell Sermon may be the most quoted speech in Islamic history, and it is one of the most loosely quoted. The version that circulates reads like a transcript — one continuous address running from a warning that he may not meet them again, through the sanctity of life and property, the cancelled debts and blood feuds, the rights of women and the equality of Arab and non-Arab, to a charge to carry the message onward.

Almost every clause in that text is genuine. Very few of them were narrated together.

What reaches us is a set of addresses delivered over several days in the tenth year after the Hijrah, remembered in pieces by different companions. Assembling them into one continuous text makes the sermon easier to reproduce and costs the ability to say where a sentence was said, on which day, and to which crowd — which, for a text this heavily used in argument, is the thing worth knowing.

So here is the sermon taken apart, with each clause put back on the printed page it was narrated from.

“I do not know whether I will meet you again after this year” is where most retellings begin. The wording is real. Its setting is not a sermon at all — Jābir ibn ʿAbdillāh describes hearing it while the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was throwing the jamrah on the day of sacrifice, mounted on his camel:

يا أَيُّها النَّاس، خُذُوا مَنَاسِكَكُم، فَإِنِّي لا أدري لعلِّي لا أَحُجُّ بعد عامي هذا

O people, take your rites from me, for I do not know — perhaps I shall not perform Hajj after this year of mine.

— Sunan al-Nasāʾī, printed page 5/477 of , hadith 3062, narrated from Jābir; the editors of this printing grade the report ṣaḥīḥ in the footnote.

The setting changes what the sentence is doing: not the overture of a farewell address, but an instruction attached to a specific act — watch this, because you may not get to watch it again.

Three separate addresses from that pilgrimage are all quoted as “the Farewell Sermon”. They are not interchangeable.

At ʿArafah, on the ninth of Dhū al-Ḥijjah. When the sun passed its zenith he called for his camel al-Qaṣwāʾ, rode into the valley bottom and addressed the people before praying Ẓuhr and ʿAṣr together — preserved inside Jābir’s narration of the whole pilgrimage. The abolitions and the passage on women sit here.

At Minā, on the tenth, the day of sacrifice. Ibn ʿAbbās’s report in al-Bukhārī, carrying the sentence about blood, property and honour.

At Minā again, mid-tashrīq. A report in Musnad Aḥmad, transmitted through Abū Naḍrah from a companion the chain does not name. Lineage is addressed here.

They overlap without duplicating, and where they differ the differences are worth noticing rather than smoothing away.

Al-Bukhārī’s version does not begin as a declaration at all. It begins as three questions, with the answers supplied by the crowd:

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ أَيُّ يَوْمٍ هَذَا، قَالُوا: يَوْمٌ حَرَامٌ، قَالَ: فَأَيُّ بَلَدٍ هَذَا، قَالُوا: بَلَدٌ حَرَامٌ، قَالَ: فَأَيُّ شَهْرٍ هَذَا، قَالُوا: شَهْرٌ حَرَامٌ، قَالَ: فَإِنَّ دِمَاءَكُمْ وَأَمْوَالَكُمْ وَأَعْرَاضَكُمْ عَلَيْكُمْ حَرَامٌ، كَحُرْمَةِ يَوْمِكُمْ هَذَا، فِي بَلَدِكُمْ هَذَا، فِي شَهْرِكُمْ هَذَا

O people, what day is this? They said: a sacred day. He said: and what land is this? They said: a sacred land. He said: and what month is this? They said: a sacred month. He said: then your blood, your property and your honour are sacred to you, like the sanctity of this day of yours, in this land of yours, in this month of yours.

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 2/176 of , hadith 1739, narrated from Ibn ʿAbbās, delivered on the day of sacrifice.

The crowd supplies the premise. Everyone there already knew that the sacred month, the sacred precinct and this day were not available for ordinary use; that much survived intact from before Islam. The sermon takes an inviolability nobody disputed and transfers it onto persons. Nothing is argued for — something already believed is moved.

Ibn ʿAbbās then adds his own oath — by the One in whose hand my soul is, this was his bequest to his ummah — and preserves the charge that follows:

فَلْيُبْلِغِ الشَّاهِدُ الْغَائِبَ، لَا تَرْجِعُوا بَعْدِي كُفَّارًا يَضْرِبُ بَعْضُكُمْ رِقَابَ بَعْضٍ

Let the one present convey to the one absent. Do not return after me as disbelievers, striking one another’s necks.

That sentence is why the sanctity clause exists, and it points inward: the danger it names is not an enemy army but this crowd, afterwards, to each other.

Two narrations qualify the clause in ways the composite text quietly drops. Jābir’s account of ʿArafah, the day before, carries only two of the three terms — blood and property, with no mention of honour. And the narrator of the tashrīq sermon in Musnad Aḥmad, recounting the same three questions, interrupts himself to say he cannot be certain: and I do not know whether he said “or your honour” or not. A transmitter recording his own uncertainty in the middle of the sermon’s most-quoted sentence is not a weakness in the report; it is most of the reason the rest can be trusted.

At ʿArafah, from the back of the camel, came the abolitions:

أَلَا كُلُّ شَيْءٍ مِنْ أَمْرِ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ تَحْتَ قَدَمَيَّ مَوْضُوعٌ. وَدِمَاءُ الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ مَوْضُوعَةٌ. وَإِنَّ أَوَّلَ دَمٍ أَضَعُ مِنْ دِمَائِنَا دَمُ ابْنِ رَبِيعَةَ بْنِ الْحَارِثِ. كَانَ مُسْتَرْضِعًا فِي بَنِي سَعْدٍ فَقَتَلَتْهُ هُذَيْلٌ. وَرِبَا الْجَاهِلِيَّةِ مَوْضُوعٌ. وَأَوَّلُ رِبًا أَضَعُ رِبَانَا. رِبَا عَبَّاسِ بْنِ عَبْدِ الْمُطَّلِبِ. فَإِنَّهُ مَوْضُوعٌ كُلُّهُ

Every matter of the age of ignorance is under my feet, abolished. The blood-claims of that age are abolished, and the first of them I abolish is the blood of the son of Rabīʿah ibn al-Ḥārith — he had been sent out to nurse among Banū Saʿd, and Hudhayl killed him. The usury of that age is abolished, and the first usury I abolish is our own: the usury of al-ʿAbbās ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib. All of it is abolished.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 2/886 of , hadith 1218, from Jābir’s account of the pilgrimage.

Two claims are cancelled by name, and both belong to his own household. Al-ʿAbbās was his uncle; the murdered infant belonged to the same clan. An amnesty always costs somebody, and this one names who pays first — not the audience.

The clause that usually follows in the popular text — you shall have your capital sums; you will neither wrong nor be wronged — is not in Muslim’s ʿArafah wording. It comes through a different companion, ʿAmr ibn al-Aḥwaṣ, who was also present:

ألا إنَّ كلَّ رباً من ربا الجاهليةِ مَوضوعٌ، لكم رؤوسُ أموالِكم لا تَظلِمونَ ولا تُظلَمونَ

Every usury of the age of ignorance is abolished. You shall have your capital sums; you will neither wrong nor be wronged.

— Sunan Abī Dāwūd, printed page 5/223 of , hadith 3334; the editors of this printing call it ṣaḥīḥ by corroboration, and note that al-Tirmidhī graded it ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ.

This narration also names the first cancelled blood-claim differently: al-Ḥārith ibn ʿAbd al-Muṭṭalib, nursed among Banū Layth rather than Banū Saʿd. The reports do not agree on the child, and saying so beats picking one silently.

The phrase itself is not new language. It is a revealed sentence quoted back almost word for word:

فَإِن لَّمْ تَفْعَلُوا۟ فَأْذَنُوا۟ بِحَرْبٍ مِّنَ ٱللَّهِ وَرَسُولِهِۦ ۖ وَإِن تُبْتُمْ فَلَكُمْ رُءُوسُ أَمْوَٰلِكُمْ لَا تَظْلِمُونَ وَلَا تُظْلَمُونَ

But if you do not, then be warned of war from Allah and His Messenger. And if you repent, you shall have your capital sums — neither wronging nor being wronged.

— Sūrat al-Baqarah, 2:279

The sermon is not announcing a policy at ʿArafah. It is executing one.

Something else is dated to that same standing. The announcement that the religion had been perfected and the favour completed — Sūrat al-Māʾidah 5:3 — came down at ʿArafah on a Friday, according to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb, who said he knew both the day and the place: Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 1/18 of , hadith 45. So the rulings of the age of ignorance went under his feet and the religion was declared complete within the same hours, on the same hill. The sermon is the itemised half of that: a completed religion, read out one cancelled debt and one dropped claim at a time.

فَاتَّقُوا اللَّهَ فِي النِّسَاءِ. فَإِنَّكُمْ أَخَذْتُمُوهُنَّ بِأَمَانِ اللَّهِ. وَاسْتَحْلَلْتُمْ فُرُوجَهُنَّ بِكَلِمَةِ اللَّهِ

So fear Allah regarding women. You took them under Allah’s guarantee, and made them lawful to yourselves by the word of Allah.

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 2/886 of , in the same address as the abolitions.

What follows it on that page runs in both directions: an obligation on the wives; a corrective permitted only if that obligation is breached and explicitly restricted to what does not injure; then an obligation on the husbands — their provision and clothing, according to what is recognised as fair. ʿAmr ibn al-Aḥwaṣ’s narration keeps the structure and opens it with a line Muslim’s wording does not carry:

اسْتَوْصُوا بِالنِّسَاءِ خَيْرًا، فَإِنَّهُنَّ عِنْدَكُمْ عَوَانٍ

Accept my counsel concerning women, and treat them well — for they are ʿawān with you.

— Sunan Ibn Mājah, printed page 3/57 of , hadith 1851; the editors grade it ṣaḥīḥ by corroboration with a ḥasan chain.

ʿAwān is the hard word. Its root is captivity, and translations reach for “captives” — but what it introduces is a list of what is owed to them, not of what may be done to them. Both halves sit on one page in one breath, and quoting either alone — the corrective without the obligations, or the obligations without the corrective — produces a text that does not exist.

وَقَدْ تَرَكْتُ فِيكُمْ مَا لَنْ تَضِلُّوا بَعْدَهُ إِنِ اعْتَصَمْتُمْ بِهِ. كِتَابُ اللَّهِ. وَأَنْتُمْ تُسْأَلُونَ عَنِّي. فَمَا أَنْتُمْ قَائِلُونَ؟

I have left among you that after which you will never go astray, if you hold fast to it: the Book of Allah. And you will be asked about me — so what will you say?

— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 2/886 of , closing the ʿArafah address.

The conditional is carrying the weight. Not I have left you a guarantee, but I have left you something you will not go astray after — if you hold to it.

They answered that they bore witness he had conveyed, discharged and counselled. Jābir describes the hand: the index finger raised toward the sky, then brought down toward the people, three times — “O Allah, bear witness.”

يَا أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ، أَلَا إِنَّ رَبَّكُمْ وَاحِدٌ، وَإِنَّ أَبَاكُمْ وَاحِدٌ، أَلَا لَا فَضْلَ لِعَرَبِيٍّ عَلَى عَجَمِيٍّ، وَلَا لِعَجَمِيٍّ عَلَى عَرَبِيٍّ، وَلَا أَحْمَرَ عَلَى أَسْوَدَ، وَلَا أَسْوَدَ عَلَى أَحْمَرَ إِلَّا بِالتَّقْوَى، أَبَلَّغْتُ

O people: your Lord is one, and your father is one. No Arab has any merit over a non-Arab, nor any non-Arab over an Arab, nor any red over any black, nor any black over any red — except by taqwā. Have I conveyed?

— Musnad Aḥmad, printed page 38/474 of , hadith 23489, from a companion who heard the sermon in the middle of the days of tashrīq; the editors of this printing state that its chain is ṣaḥīḥ.

Said to an audience organised almost entirely by descent. The claim is not that lineage does not exist but that it confers no rank — the measure a verse had already set:

يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلنَّاسُ إِنَّا خَلَقْنَـٰكُم مِّن ذَكَرٍ وَأُنثَىٰ وَجَعَلْنَـٰكُمْ شُعُوبًا وَقَبَآئِلَ لِتَعَارَفُوٓا۟ ۚ إِنَّ أَكْرَمَكُمْ عِندَ ٱللَّهِ أَتْقَىٰكُمْ ۚ إِنَّ ٱللَّهَ عَلِيمٌ خَبِيرٌ

O mankind, We created you from a male and a female, and made you peoples and tribes so that you may come to know one another. Truly, the most noble of you in the sight of Allah is the most righteous among you. Allah is truly All-Knowing, All-Aware.

— Sūrat al-Ḥujurāt, 49:13

Ibn ʿAbbās did not call it a speech. He called it a bequest — something handed to people who would have to carry it out once the one who gave it was gone.

And it was handed to a crowd with every reason to think the warning unnecessary. Twenty-three years of conflict had just ended, Makkah was open, and the people being told not to make each other’s blood cheap were at that moment at peace on the same hill. The warning was issued anyway, aimed inward.

Whether it was received is not measured by how often it gets quoted, but against the three things it named — blood, property, honour. That has never been comfortable reading, and it was not written to be.

If anything above is wrong — a rendering that misses the Arabic, a citation that does not hold up, a grading claim stated with more confidence than the printed page allows — tell us. That correction is worth more to us than the post standing unchallenged.

May Allah ﷻ make us people who hear what was left with us, and keep our hands and our tongues away from what He declared sacred.