—the well-known ones— and the way they have been handed down is even more firmly established than the transmission of any other accounts about prophets, scholars, kings, or ascetics.

The same is true of his pilgrimage. They are all agreed—on the basis of mass-transmitted (tawātur) reports—that after the Hijrah he performed only one ḥajj, the pilgrimage called the Farewell Ḥajj, and that he lived for roughly three months afterward. They likewise concur that, during that pilgrimage, he ordered all of his Companions—except those who had brought sacrificial animals—to leave the state of consecration for ʿumrah once they had circumambulated the House and walked between Ṣafā and Marwah; that neither he nor any of the Companions who travelled with him performed a separate ʿumrah after the ḥajj, the sole exception being ʿĀʾishah; and that he himself, and everyone who had brought a sacrificial animal, remained in ihram until the rite of ḥajj was completed.

Only certain phrases of his, or details that escape most people, led to confusion among some. The Companions used to speak of the tamattuʿ of the Messenger of Allah—that is, his combining ʿumrah with ḥajj—yet some listeners supposed they meant that he delayed entering ihram for the ḥajj until after finishing the ʿumrah. Some Companions stated that he performed ifrād (ḥajj alone), and some people therefore imagined that he had performed ḥajj and then undertaken a separate ʿumrah afterward. No scholar has ever transmitted such a notion; on the contrary, they are unanimously agreed that he did not perform an ʿumrah after that ḥajj. Other Companions related that he performed qirān (combining ḥajj and ʿumrah in a single ihram), which led some people to imagine that he must therefore have made two circumambulations of the Kaʿbah and two circuits between Ṣafā and Marwah—but no one has ever reported that he did so.

Much of the confusion arose because later people employed those technical terms with meanings other than those intended by the Companions, and thus some people misunderstood what some of the Companions meant. As for what he actually did during the ḥajj in the well-known and agreed-upon account, it is