Section on Stoning the Jamrahs
Introduction
The verb tajammur means “to gather together,” and the jamrahs were so named either because people converge around them or because the pebbles accumulate there. They are among the sacred symbols of the pilgrimage, and they are three:
- The first, which is adjacent to al-Khaif Mosque;
- The middle one; and
- Jamrat al-ʿAqabah, the jamrah nearest to Mecca and the western limit of Mina.
Shaykh Ḥasan Makram writes in Ghuniyat al-Nasik: “A jamrah is the ground at the marker, not the marker itself, for that marker only points to the jamrah.”
Al-Shafiʿi said: “The jamrah is the heap of pebbles, not the pebbles that have scattered away from it.”
Al-Muḥibb al-Ṭabarī said: “Its boundary is everything within three cubits of the jamrah’s center.”
Shaykh Sulaymān ibn ʿAlī ibn Musharraf said: “The marmā (target) is the area of ground that surrounds the built post.”
The editor remarks: For centuries the stoning site remained without any enclosure or distinguishing sign. In 1292 AH an iron lattice was erected to relieve crowding, on the strength of a fatwa from some Meccan scholars. Other scholars objected, the most vocal being Shaykh ʿAlī Bāsarīn of Jeddah, who argued that the lattice might mislead pilgrims into thinking that everything it enclosed constituted the target. The lattice was therefore removed and, in 1293 AH, the wall that now surrounds the jamrahs was put in place.
As for Jamrat al-ʿAqabah, it is a semicircle, and the rise against which it leans has remained