the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. When he had completed his Hajj, I came to him, and he said, ‘Umm Maʿqil, what prevented you from performing Hajj?’

“She replied, ‘We had made preparations, but Abū Maʿqil died. We had a camel on which we would perform Hajj, but Abū Maʿqil bequeathed it to the cause of Allah.’

“He said, ‘Why did you not set out on it? Hajj is part of the cause of Allah.’”

Abū Dāwūd related it. Ahmad also related in his Musnad:

“Umm Maʿqil al-Asadiyyah reported that her husband had dedicated a young male camel to the cause of Allah. She wished to perform Umrah and asked her husband for the camel, but he refused. She went to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and told him about this. He instructed her husband to give it to her. The Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, ‘Hajj and Umrah are part of the cause of Allah.’”

These hadiths show that he, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, meant the Umrah familiar to those he was addressing: a person travelling to Mecca to perform Umrah. As for a Meccan going outside the Sacred Precinct to begin an Umrah, this was something they neither knew nor practised nor enjoined. How, then, could this have been intended by the hadith? Moreover, this woman was in Medina, the Prophet’s city, and her Umrah could only have begun at the prescribed boundary; it was not an Umrah originating in Mecca.

How could he have encouraged them to perform an Umrah originating in Mecca during Ramadan, yet they failed to perform an act carrying such an immense reward, despite their intense desire for goodness and eagerness to pursue it? And why did the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, not tell the residents of Mecca about this, so that they could perform Umrah every year during Ramadan? Rather, he told this only to someone who was