The Excellent Exemplar - Muhammad — Page 56
56 The Concluding Years IN THE SIXTH YEAR AFTER THE EMIGRATION, THE Prophet saw in a vision that he was performing the circuit of the Ka’aba with a party of Muslims (48:28). Relating this vision to his companions, he asked them to prepare for a journey to Mecca for the purpose of performing the circuit. This was a privilege which could be claimed by anyone, and it was not permissible to hinder its exercise. The Prophet announced that the only purpose of his party, which numbered fifteen hundred men, was to perform the circuit in p eace and then to return to Medina. He had no hostile intent against anybody. The Meccans decided not to permit him and his party to enter Mecca for any purpose whatever, and sent out a strong force to the north to intercept him. The Prophet, approaching Me cca from the west, refrained from entering the limits of the Sanctuary, * and made camp a few miles outside these limits. He announced that he would accept any conditions the Meccans might choose to impose upon his party during the period they would be in Mecca, so only that they might perform their acts of worship in peace. (The Sanctuary, an area encompassing the Ka’aba and its precincts and extending for twenty miles in each direction from the limits of Mecca, is a region in which no fighting is permitte d. Pillars mark the boundaries of the Sanctuary)