2 – Knowledge should be imparted at the very moment people need it, for then it clings most firmly to their hearts.
3 – Among the signs of Mecca’s sanctity is that Allah stopped the Abyssinians’ elephant from entering it, for they meant only aggression, oppression, and the violation of the Sacred House. By contrast, the Prophet ﷺ fought on the day of the Conquest of Mecca to purge it of polytheism, idols, and the worship of anything besides Allah, and to exalt and purify the House from the remnants of paganism. Allah therefore granted him mastery over its inhabitants until he took possession of it, and it became an Islamic city.
4 – The permissibility of fighting in Mecca was granted to the Prophet ﷺ alone and only for that single hour of the Conquest when necessity required it. Apart from that exceptional case, Mecca is inviolable for all time—past and future—so fighting there is never lawful, and no one may cite the Prophet’s fighting on that day as a license to do so.
5 – Shedding blood in Mecca is prohibited except for the legitimate enforcement of prescribed penalties. The correct view—held by Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī—is that such enforcement is permissible within the Sanctuary. The majority, however, maintain an absolute ban on bloodshed and require that anyone liable to a penalty be pressed to leave the Ḥaram so it can be carried out outside. The first view is stronger in light of the general evidence.
6 – Mecca’s sanctity extends even to its game animals: it is unlawful to drive them from one place to another, and capturing or killing them is still more strictly forbidden and more grievous in sin.
7 – Cutting the naturally growing trees, thorns, and herbage of Mecca is forbidden. Whatever a person has planted himself, however, is his property and he may cut or harvest it; this is the opinion of the majority of scholars. Imām al-Shāfiʿī, taking the hadith in its full generality, rules that no tree may be cut there under any circumstance.
8 – A lost article found within the Sanctuary may not be taken with the intention of announcing it for a year and then claiming ownership, for it can never lawfully become one’s property. If someone wishes to pick it up in order to identify it for as long as he lives, he may do so.
9 – If a person is killed deliberately, his heir may choose either retributive execution (qiṣāṣ) or the payment of blood money.
10 – The idhkhir plant was exempted from the prohibition on cutting the Sanctuary’s vegetation because the inhabitants of the Ḥaram need it, and so it was declared lawful.