600 – Ibn ʿAbbās (may Allah be pleased with them) said: I heard the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) deliver a sermon in which he declared, “No man is ever to be alone with a woman unless she is accompanied by a mahram, and a woman must not travel except with a mahram. Then a man stood up and said, ‘O Messenger of Allah, my wife has set out for the pilgrimage while my name has been enrolled in such-and-such a military expedition.’ He replied, ‘Go and perform ḥajj with your wife.’” Agreed upon; the wording is that of Muslim.⦗1⦘

Vocabulary of the ḥadith:
– lā yakhluwanna: the particle lā is prohibitive and puts the verb in the jussive; the verb here shows a fatḥa because it is attached to the emphatic nūn.
– “Except when she is accompanied by a mahram”: a mahram is someone whom she is forever forbidden to marry—by blood relationship, such as her father or brother, or by a lawful cause such as affinity through marriage or breastfeeding; the husband also has the ruling of a mahram.
– iktutibtu: passive form; the root kataba carries the sense of “gathering,” hence writing is the gathering of letters. Here it means, “my name has been written among those going out to fight.”
– kadhā wa kadhā: the kāf functions as a particle of comparison, dhā is a demonstrative pronoun, and the repetition is verbal reinforcement of the first.

Points derived from the ḥadith:
1 – It is forbidden for a man to be alone with an unrelated woman (one who is not his mahram).
2 – It is likewise forbidden for a woman to travel without a mahram, even for an act of worship or for a need.
3 – If she has no mahram, ḥajj is not obligatory for her by unanimous agreement of the scholars; the jurists, however, differ on whether the presence of a mahram is a condition for the obligation itself or only for its performance.