2593 — “Have you not realized that I gave them an instruction, yet they are hesitating over it? Had I known beforehand what I came to know afterward, I would not have brought sacrificial animals with me or purchased them until I had left the state of ihram as they did.”

Ishaq ibn Rahawayh recorded it in his Musnad (4/126/2): Al-Nadr and Wahb informed us; they said: Shu‘bah narrated to us, from al-Hakam ibn ‘Utaybah, from ‘Ali ibn al-Husayn, from Dhakwan, the freedman of ‘A’ishah, from ‘A’ishah, who said: The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, entered upon me during his pilgrimage, when four or five nights of Dhu al-Hijjah had passed, and he was angry. I said: “O Messenger of Allah, whoever has angered you, may Allah cast him into the Fire!” He then mentioned the hadith.

I say: This is an authentic chain of transmission according to the conditions of the two Shaykhs. Muslim (4/33–34), Ahmad (6/175), and al-Bayhaqi (5/19) also recorded it through other routes from Shu‘bah with this same chain.

I say: This hadith is like many reports cited by Ibn al-Qayyim in Zad al-Ma‘ad, all of which mention that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, commanded those undertaking Hajj alone and those combining Hajj with Umrah—provided that they had not brought sacrificial animals with them—to convert their Hajj into an Umrah. I have singled this one out here because of the rarity of its earliest source, Ishaq’s Musnad, and because it relates ‘A’ishah’s account of the Prophet’s anger, peace and blessings be upon him, at his Companions’ hesitation to carry out the instruction to convert the Hajj.

It should be understood that their hesitation, may Allah be pleased with them, was not born of disobedience, for that was not their way. Rather, as its narrator al-Hakam said in Ahmad and elsewhere, “It was as though they were awestruck.” This was because, in the pre-Islamic era, they had not regarded Umrah during the days of Hajj as permissible, as is stated in some authentic hadiths. That is one consideration. Another is that they saw that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, had not left the state of ihram with them, so they assumed there was some latitude in the matter and thus hesitated. But when they learned the reason from him and he emphatically repeated the instruction to them, they hastened to carry it out, may Allah be pleased with them.