your exertion.”

If a pilgrim returns to his family home and sets out from there for umrah, or performs umrah before the months of Hajj and stays until he performs Hajj, or performs umrah during those months, returns home, and then sets out for Hajj, he has undertaken each of the two rites from his family home. He has thus performed both in the fullest manner, which is better than the alternatives.

However, if he performs Hajj alone and then performs umrah from the nearest point outside the Sacred Precinct, this manner of performing Hajj separately was not practised by the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, or by any of his Companions who performed Hajj with him, nor indeed by anyone else. How, then, could it be better than what they did with him at his command? Indeed, no one other than ʿĀ’isha is known to have set out for umrah from Mecca during the time of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace—whether during the Farewell Pilgrimage, before it, or after it. Moreover, according to one of the two reports from Ahmad, such an umrah does not fulfil the obligation of umrah. Some scholars consider it tamattuʿ.

A group of scholars considers performing umrah in Dhū al-Hijja disliked. Indeed, whenever ʿĀ’isha performed Hajj, she would wait until Muharram began and then enter ihrām from al-Juhfa. Thus, she would perform umrah neither from the nearest point outside the Sacred Precinct nor during Dhū al-Hijja.

As for someone who wishes to combine the two rites in a single journey, arrives in Mecca during the months of Hajj, and has not brought sacrificial animals with him, tamattuʿ is better for him than performing Hajj and then performing umrah from outside the Sacred Precinct, because the Companions of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace,