Articles
The Day of ʿArafah, for Those Who Are Not There
Three things are asked of every Muslim on the ninth of Dhū al-Ḥijjah, not only the ones standing on the plain: a fast the sources describe as reaching a year backward and a year forward, a sentence called the best of all duʿāʾ, and a verse revealed on this exact day that a Jewish man told ʿUmar his own people would have kept as a festival.
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- The Quran Gallery team
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Somewhere outside Makkah today a crowd is standing in the open, with nothing between them and the sky and nothing on the schedule until sunset. That is the ninth of Dhū al-Ḥijjah for the pilgrim, and this article is not about them.
It is about everyone else — everyone who woke up to the same commute, the same inbox, the same kitchen, who has never stood on that plain and this year is not going to. The sources are specific that the ninth addresses this much larger group too, and specific about what it asks of them: a fast, a sentence worth repeating all day, and one verse that was revealed on this exact day for a reason that has nothing to do with where you happen to be standing.
The report behind the fast of ʿArafah is not, in the collection that carries it, a tidy question and answer. A man came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and asked how he fasted; the Prophet grew visibly angry, and ʿUmar had to talk him back down before the exchange could continue. Only after the man had worked through several patterns of voluntary fasting — a day on and a day off, two days on and one off — did the Prophet volunteer, unprompted, the pattern that closes the report:
ثَلَاثٌ مِنْ كُلِّ شَهْرٍ. وَرَمَضَانُ إِلَى رَمَضَانَ. فَهَذَا صِيَامُ الدَّهْرِ كُلِّهِ. صِيَامُ يَوْمِ عَرَفَةَ، أَحْتَسِبُ عَلَى اللَّهِ أَنْ يُكَفِّرَ السَّنَةَ الَّتِي قَبْلَهُ. وَالسَّنَةَ الَّتِي بَعْدَهُ. وَصِيَامُ يَوْمِ عَاشُورَاءَ، أَحْتَسِبُ عَلَى اللَّهِ أَنْ يكفر السنة التي قبله Three days from every month, and Ramaḍān to Ramaḍān — that is the fast of an entire lifetime. The fast of the Day of ʿArafah: I reckon it upon Allah that it expiates the year before it and the year after it. And the fast of the Day of ʿĀshūrāʾ: I reckon it upon Allah that it expiates the year before it.
— Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, printed page 2/818 of , hadith 1162, narrated from Abū Qatādah.
“Expiates” is doing a lot of work in one sentence, and it is worth asking exactly what it is said to cover before repeating it as a headline claim. Al-Nawawī, working through this hadith clause by clause, answers directly:
مَعْنَاهُ يُكَفِّرُ ذُنُوبَ صَائِمِهِ فِي السَّنَتَيْنِ قَالُوا وَالْمُرَادُ بِهَا الصَّغَائِرُ وَسَبَقَ بَيَانُ مِثْلِ هَذَا فِي تَكْفِيرِ الْخَطَايَا بِالْوُضُوءِ وَذَكَرْنَا هُنَاكَ أَنَّهُ إِنْ لَمْ تَكُنْ صَغَائِرُ يُرْجَى التَّخْفِيفُ مِنَ الْكَبَائِرِ فَإِنْ لَمْ يَكُنْ رُفِعْتَ دَرَجَاتٍ Its meaning: it expiates the sins of the one who fasts it, across the two years. The scholars said what is meant by this is minor sins — we already explained the like of this regarding the expiation of faults by wuḍūʾ, and mentioned there that if there are no minor sins to expiate, there is hope it will lighten major ones; and if not even that, then ranks are raised.
— Sharḥ al-Nawawī ʿalā Muslim, printed page 8/51 of .
Three tiers, not one blanket wipe: minor sins first, a hoped-for lightening of major ones if there are none, and raised rank if even that does not apply. None of the three requires standing anywhere or owning a ticket. It requires a fast — which is why it is worth saying plainly: if the first eight days of Dhū al-Ḥijjah went by unfasted, this is the one day of the ten not to lose to the same excuse.
On what to do with the hours the fast frees up, one report gives a specific answer and a specific sentence:
خَيْرُ الدُّعَاءِ دُعَاءُ يَوْمِ عَرَفَةَ، وَخَيْرُ مَا قُلْتُ أَنَا وَالنَّبِيُّونَ مِنْ قَبْلِي: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ، وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ، لَهُ الْمُلْكُ وَلَهُ الْحَمْدُ، وَهُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ The best of duʿāʾ is the duʿāʾ of the Day of ʿArafah, and the best of what I and the prophets before me have said is: there is no god but Allah, alone, without partner; His is the dominion and His is the praise, and He is over all things powerful.
— Sunan al-Tirmidhī, printed page 5/541 of , hadith 3585, narrated from ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather.
That sentence deserves the same honesty this program applies everywhere else. Al-Tirmidhī does not stop at recording the hadith — on the same page he grades it himself, in words that are his and not an editor’s footnote:
This is a gharīb hadith from this route, and Ḥammād ibn Abī Ḥumayd — that is, Muḥammad ibn Abī Ḥumayd, Abū Ibrāhīm al-Anṣārī al-Madīnī — is not considered strong among the people of hadith.
Gharīb means the wording survives on one narrow chain, and al-Tirmidhī is the one naming the narrator that chain leans on as weak. That does not erase the report, but it means the specific claim that this exact sentence is the best of all duʿāʾ rests on a route the collection’s own compiler flagged as such.
What does not rest on that one route is the sentence itself. The same declaration — lā ilāha illa Allāh waḥdahu lā sharīka lahu, lahu al-mulk wa lahu al-ḥamd, wa huwa ʿalā kulli shayʾin qadīr — is the subject of an agreed-upon report in both Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī and Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, standing on its own, with no attachment to any particular day:
مَنْ قَالَ: لَا إِلَهَ إِلَّا اللهُ وَحْدَهُ لَا شَرِيكَ لَهُ لَهُ الْمُلْكُ وَلَهُ الْحَمْدُ وَهُوَ عَلَى كُلِّ شَيْءٍ قَدِيرٌ، فِي يَوْمٍ مِائَةَ مَرَّةٍ كَانَتْ لَهُ عَدْلَ عَشْرِ رِقَابٍ وَكُتِبَتْ لَهُ مِائَةُ حَسَنَةٍ وَمُحِيَتْ عَنْهُ مِائَةُ سَيِّئَةٍ وَكَانَتْ لَهُ حِرْزًا مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ يَوْمَهُ ذَلِكَ حَتَّى يُمْسِيَ وَلَمْ يَأْتِ أَحَدٌ بِأَفْضَلَ مِمَّا جَاءَ بِهِ إِلَّا أَحَدٌ عَمِلَ أَكْثَرَ مِنْ ذَلِكَ Whoever says — there is no god but Allah, alone, without partner; His is the dominion and His is the praise, and He is over all things powerful — a hundred times in a day, it is for him the equal of freeing ten slaves, a hundred good deeds are written for him, a hundred bad deeds are erased from him, and it shields him from Shayṭān for the rest of that day; and no one brings anything better than what he has brought, except one who does more than that.
— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 4/126 of , hadith 3293, narrated from Abū Hurayrah.
So the honest version is not “the single greatest sentence in Islam, on the authority of a chain al-Tirmidhī himself doubted.” It is closer to this: a sentence with independently solid standing, that a separate and less certain report also attaches specifically to this day. Say it today because it is a good sentence to say — a hundred repetitions of it would already be well established for any day of the year — and let the attachment to ʿArafah be a reason to say it more, not the reason to trust it most.
The one claim here that needs no qualifying paragraph is the last one, because Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī records both the verse and the moment of its revelation together, from ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb’s own account:
أَنَّ رَجُلًا مِنَ الْيَهُودِ قَالَ لَهُ: يَا أَمِيرَ الْمُؤْمِنِينَ، آيَةٌ فِي كِتَابِكُمْ تَقْرَءُونَهَا، لَوْ عَلَيْنَا مَعْشَرَ الْيَهُودِ نَزَلَتْ لَاتَّخَذْنَا ذَلِكَ الْيَوْمَ عِيدًا. قَالَ: أَيُّ آيَةٍ؟ قَالَ: ﴿الْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِي وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ الإِسْلامَ دِينًا﴾ قَالَ عُمَرُ: قَدْ عَرَفْنَا ذَلِكَ الْيَوْمَ وَالْمَكَانَ الَّذِي نَزَلَتْ فِيهِ عَلَى النَّبِيِّ، وَهُوَ قَائِمٌ بِعَرَفَةَ يَوْمَ جُمُعَةٍ A man from among the Jews said to him: “Commander of the Believers, there is a verse in your Book that you recite — had it been sent down upon us, the community of the Jews, we would have taken that day as a festival.” He said: “Which verse?” He said: this day I have perfected for you your religion… ʿUmar said: “We know well the day and the place in which it was sent down upon the Prophet — he was standing at ʿArafah, on a Friday.”
— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī, printed page 1/18 of , hadith 45, narrated from ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb.
The verse itself, in the wording our own corpus carries it:
… ٱلْيَوْمَ أَكْمَلْتُ لَكُمْ دِينَكُمْ وَأَتْمَمْتُ عَلَيْكُمْ نِعْمَتِى وَرَضِيتُ لَكُمُ ٱلْإِسْلَـٰمَ دِينًا … … This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favor upon you, and approved for you Islam as religion. …
The man in the report is unnamed, and nothing here needs to be built on that detail. What ʿUmar’s own answer establishes is where “that day” was: the Prophet was standing at ʿArafah when the verse came down, on a Friday. That is the single fact this article borrows from the plain — not because the standing is its subject, but because it is the reason the completion of the religion is dated to this day and no other. The pilgrims are there for the rite; the verse landed on all of them, and on every reader of this sentence, at once.
Read the fast and the duʿāʾ against that verse and the shape of the day comes together. It is not that ʿArafah is generically a good day to worship harder. It is a day the tradition holds to be the hinge the religion itself turned on, and on which two specific acts of worship happen to also carry an outsized, if unevenly attested, reward. What follows from that is small and doable from anywhere: fast if you are able, keep the sentence moving on your tongue through the day, and remember, if only for an afternoon, what day it actually is.
If anything above overstates a claim — a grading given more confidence than the page allows, a translation that drifts from the Arabic, an “expiates” read too broadly — tell us. Sparse and correctable is the standard we are holding ourselves to.
May Allah ﷻ accept the fast, answer the duʿāʾ, and count everyone who was not standing at ʿArafah today among those He has drawn near.