enter iḥrām, except for a few, until our government opened the Ṭāʾif–Mecca highway that passes through al-Hada and Jabal Karā. It then became a major, crowded site for assuming iḥrām, so the government built there an exceptionally large mosque, with asphalted access and exit roads, car parks, rest areas, bathing facilities and modern wash-rooms, all specially designed for this important miqat.

It is not regarded as an independent miqat in its own right, for it is a branch of Qarn al-Manāzil and is 75 kilometres from Mecca. Were it not for the many switchbacks of Jabal Karā, the distance would be no more than about 60 kilometres.

Everyone who would have entered iḥrām at the lower miqat may do so here, in addition to the pilgrims of Ṭāʾif, those coming from the southern Ḥijāz of the Kingdom, and the Ḥijāzi pilgrims of Yemen.

Supplement:

Dhat ʿIrq—pronounced with a kasrah on the ʿayn, a silent rāʾ, followed by a qāf—was so named because it contains an ʿirq, that is, a small mountain. It is now called al-Duraybah. Yāqūt writes: “Al-Duraybah is a Ḥijāzi valley whose floodwater flows into Dhat ʿIrq. Al-Duraybah, with a fatḥah on the ḍād, a kasrah on the rāʾ, then a yāʾ, a bāʾ and a single hāʾ, is derived from al-ḍirāb, meaning the small hills.”

This miqat is not mentioned in the hadith collections of the two Ṣaḥīḥs, but some of the Sunan relate that the Prophet designated Dhat ʿIrq as the miqat for the people of Iraq, and a number of scholars have judged that hadith weak.

Fath al-Bārī states: “Al-Bukhārī reports from Ibn ʿUmar that when Kūfah and Basrah were conquered, their people came to ʿUmar and said, ‘Commander of the Believers, the Messenger of Allah fixed Qarn as the miqat for the people of Najd, yet it is off our route.’ He replied, ‘Look for the point on your route that lies parallel to it,’ and he fixed Dhat ʿIrq for them.”

Al-Shāfiʿī said: “No authentic report establishes that the Prophet designated Dhat ʿIrq; rather, the community reached consensus on it.” This shows, he argues, that Dhat ʿIrq is not textually stipulated. Al-Ghazālī and al-Rāfiʿī adopted the same view in their commentary on the Musnad, as did al-Nawawī in his commentary on Muslim, and the same appears in Mālik’s al-Mudawwanah.

The Ḥanafīs, Ḥanbalīs and the majority of Shāfiʿīs, however, maintain that it is textually established. They cite the hadith of Jābir recorded by Muslim, though whether it is truly traced back to the Prophet is disputed. The report is also found in the hadith of ʿĀʾishah and that of al-Ḥārith al-Sahmī, both narrated by Aḥmad, Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī. This shows that the hadith has a foundation; perhaps those who denied that it was explicitly stipulated were unaware of it or regarded its chain of transmission as weak. This is an abridgement of what appears in Fath al-Bārī.

I add: In any case, the appointment of this miqat has been authentically reported from ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him). If it was in fact designated in revelation and he was unaware of that, then it is counted among his well-known instances of concurrence; and if no text had been revealed, then he said