As an institution ḥajj1 existed, before the advent of Islām, from a very remote antiquity. Modern European criticism takes the view that its adoption by Islām, with certain reforms, of course, was due to several causes which sprang up after the Holy Prophet’s flight to Madīnah. Chief among these causes are said to be the victory won by Islām at Badr which, it is opined, made the Holy Prophet look forward to the conquest of Makkah, and the final rupture with the Jews, whom the Holy Prophet had, at first, hoped to win over to his cause. Hughes advances this theory in his Dictionary of Islām under the heading “Ka‘bah”:
“When Muḥammad found himself established in al-Madīnah, with a very good prospect of his obtaining possession of Makkah, and its historic associations, he seems to have withdrawn his thoughts from Jerusalem and its Sacred Rock and to fix them on the house at Bakkah as the home founded for mankind … The Jews proving obdurate and there being little chance of his succeeding in establishing his claim as their prophet, spoken of by Moses, he changes the qiblah, or direction for prayer, from Jerusalem to Makkah. The house at Makkah is made “a place of resort unto men and a sanctuary.”
Other European writers have advanced the same theory, and recently A.J. Wensinck has incorporated it into the Encyclopaedia of Islām. Writing under “Hadjdj”, he says:
“Muḥammad’s interest in the Hadjdj was first aroused in al-Medina. Several causes contributed to this, as Snouck Hurgronje has shown in his Mekkaansche Feest. The brilliant success of the battle of Badr had aroused in him thoughts of a conquest of Mecca. The preparations for such a step would naturally be more successful if the secular as well as the religious interests of his
1 The word ḥajj means, literally, repairing to a thing for the sake of a visit (al-qasd li-l-ziyāra) (R.) and in the technicality of law the repairing to Bait-Allāh (the House of Allāh) to observe the necessary devotions (iqāmat-an-li-l-nusuk) (R.). Bait-Allāh is one of the names by which the Ka‘bah is known; and nusuk means ‘ibādah (worship or devotion), or ṭā‘a (obedience); it is also the plural of nasīkah meaning dhabīḥah (the animal that is sacrificed) (N.). From the same root and carrying the significance of ibādah, is mansik, and its plural manāsik is particularly used to signify the acts of devotion prescribed in ḥajj. It is generally under the head manāsik that injunctions relating to ḥajj are mentioned in collections of Ḥadīth.