ʿUmrat al-Qaḍāʾ (the Compensatory ʿUmrah)

It is also called ʿUmrat al-Qiṣāṣ—a designation preferred by al-Suhaylī—and, thirdly, ʿUmrat al-Qaḍiyyah. The first name signifies that it compensated for the ʿUmrah from which the Prophet was prevented in the year of al-Ḥudaybiyyah. The second name derives from the words of the Exalted: “And for violated sanctities there is just retaliation” (Qur’an 2:194). The third is taken from the mutual settlement he concluded with them: that he would turn back that year, return the following year, enter Mecca only with sheathed weapons, and remain no longer than three days.

This is the ʿUmrah mentioned in the blessed Sūrah al-Fatḥ: “Allah has certainly fulfilled His Messenger’s vision in truth: you shall surely enter the Sacred Mosque, if Allah wills, in safety—your heads shaved or hair shortened—having no fear…” (48:27). We have dealt with it at length in our Tafsīr, and that discussion is sufficient—praise and bounty are Allah’s.

It is the very promise referred to when the Prophet ﷺ said to ʿUmar ibn al-Khaṭṭāb. ʿUmar asked, “Did you not tell us that we would come to the House and circumambulate it?” He replied, “Indeed; but did I tell you that you would come to it this very year?” ʿUmar said, “No.” He answered, “Then you shall go to it and circumambulate it.”

The same promise is echoed in the lines recited by ʿAbd Allāh ibn Rawāḥah as he walked ahead of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ on the day of ʿUmrat al-Qaḍāʾ:

Clear the way, you sons of unbelief—clear the way!
Today we strike you for its fulfillment,
just as before we struck you for its revelation.

That is, this is the fulfillment of the vision the Messenger of Allah ﷺ had seen, realized as clearly as daybreak.

Ibn Isḥāq said: When the Messenger of Allah ﷺ returned from Khaybar to Medina, he remained there through the two months of Rabīʿ, then Rajab, Shaʿbān, Ramaḍān, and Shawwāl, dispatching his expeditions in the meantime. He then set out in Dhū al-Qaʿdah—the very month in which the polytheists had turned him back—to perform the ʿUmrah of Reparation in place of the ʿUmrah from which they had barred him.

Ibn Hishām adds that he appointed ʿUwayf ibn al-Aḍbaṭ al-Duʾalī as governor of Medina.

This ʿUmrah is likewise called ʿUmrat al-Qiṣāṣ (“the ʿUmrah of Retaliation”), because they had barred the Messenger of Allah ﷺ in Dhū al-Qaʿdah, a sacred month, in the sixth year; he retaliated by entering Mecca in Dhū al-Qaʿdah, the same sacred month, in the seventh year.

It has reached us from Ibn ʿAbbās that Allah the Exalted revealed concerning this: “And for violated sanctities there is just retaliation.”

Muʿtamir ibn Sulaymān related from his father in his Maghāzī that when the Messenger of Allah ﷺ returned from Khaybar, he stayed in Medina and continued dispatching his detachments. When the new moon of Dhū al-Qaʿdah appeared, he announced to the people that they should prepare for ʿUmrah, so they made ready and set out for Mecca.