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The Timing of Tawaf of Ifaadah
Adil Salahi
Arab News
Q. A friend of mine told me that he performed the tawaf of ifaadah before dawn on the night following the day of attending at Arafat. He did so before he stoned at the Jamrah on that day. This is contrary to what I know to be the standard practice. Please comment.
A. Ayanicode • Jeddah
A. There are two points here: the timing of this tawaf, and the order in which certain duties are performed.
According to the Shafie and Hanbali schools of Fiqh the time when the tawaf of ifaadah becomes due begins at midnight on the night that follows the Arafat day. There is no limit to its end, but it is strongly preferable to complete this tawaf within the four days of the Eid of sacrifice. This means that as far as the timing of this tawaf by this reader’s friend was right.
On the day of sacrifice, four duties become due. These are the stoning at the Jamrah, slaughtering one’s sacrifice, shaving one’s head or cutting one’s hair, and the tawaf of ifaadah. Doing these duties in this order is a Sunnah according to some scholars. However, when the Prophet did his pilgrimage with 100,000 Muslims, most of his companions did not follow this order. People came to him and asked about the order they followed in doing these duties. They gave him every possible permutation, and he approved all as valid. This is an aspect of the facilitation he was keen to stress in performing the pilgrimage. God is aware of the great numbers of pilgrims that would be coming every year, and He is aware that putting them all to a strict order will result in great scrambling. Hence, He made it easy for us and allowed maximum latitude. Moreover, it is certainly a Sunnah for us to make things easy for people who do the pilgrimage, and indeed in all areas of life.
Having said that, I would like to add that it is preferable for pilgrims to stay the night that follows Arafat day in Muzdalifah and to attend to their next day’s duties later.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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