of the Sharia Courts and Religious Affairs in Qatar, which holds it permissible to treat Jeddah as a miqat for passengers travelling by air or sea, is invalid, for it rests on no proof from the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger, or the consensus of the early generations of this ummah, and no recognized Muslim scholar before him ever advanced such an opinion.
Second: Anyone who passes one of the prescribed spatial miqats, or comes in line with one of them by air or by sea, may not go beyond it without entering ihram, as the evidences plainly show and as the scholars—may Allah have mercy on them—have affirmed. Allah is the One who grants success, and may His blessings and peace be upon our Prophet Muhammad.
This is the gist of the Council’s resolution. With it my study of the geographical miqats comes to an end—a study that is seldom found outside this book, for it was written on the basis of direct observation, practical application, and on-site measurement. We ask Allah for success and protection; He is sufficient for us and the best Guardian.
Overall meaning
The Sacred House has been endowed with honor, veneration, sanctity, and reverence. Part of that veneration is that Allah has appointed boundaries which no pilgrim for Hajj or ʿumrah may cross unless he has already entered ihram and approaches in humility, submission, and reverence—worshipping Allah and showing respect to this purified House.
Out of mercy for His servants, Allah did not assign them a single miqat on one side of Mecca; rather, He appointed a separate miqat for every direction, so that people would not suffer hardship by having to travel to a miqat that lies off their route. He even made the miqat of the one whose home lies within the circle of the miqats the very place where he resides. The people of Mecca themselves enter ihram for Hajj from within Mecca and are not required to go outside the sacred precincts as they must do for ʿumrah.
Lessons derived from the hadith
- The specified locations are miqats; anyone intending to perform a rite may not pass them without ihram.
- Whoever lives inside the perimeter of the miqats assumes ihram from the place where he lives.
- The miqat for the people of Mecca is Mecca itself—and this applies to Hajj. For ʿumrah they must go outside the Haram boundary; this is the position of the majority, including the four Imams. Al-Muḥibb al-Ṭabarī said: “I know of no one who has made Mecca a miqat for ʿumrah.” The story of ʿĀʾishah is famous and firmly established; the implicit meaning of the hadith cannot outweigh it.
- The Prophet’s phrase “for anyone who wishes to perform Hajj or ʿumrah” indicates that a person entering Mecca for some other purpose—commerce, visiting relatives, and the like—is not obliged to enter ihram. Should he later resolve to undertake the rites, he enters ihram from the place where that resolution is made, even if it is inside the miqats, or from Mecca itself in the case of Hajj.