The Farewell Sermon: The Prophet’s Last Message (2026)

Short answer: The Farewell Sermon (Khutbat al-Wada) is the sermon the Prophet Muhammad ﷺ delivered at Arafat on 9 Dhul-Hijjah 10 AH (March 632 CE), during his only Hajj after the Hijrah — the pilgrimage known as Hajjat al-Wada, the Farewell Pilgrimage. Before a crowd reported to number over a hundred thousand companions, he laid down a final charter: life, property, and honour are sacred; usury and blood feuds are abolished; women must be treated with kindness and justice; all Muslims are brothers, with no superiority of Arab over non-Arab except by God-consciousness. He closed by asking, “Have I conveyed the message?” — and the crowd bore witness that he had.

The Setting: One Hajj, One Last Address

The Prophet ﷺ performed Hajj only once after migrating to Madinah. In 10 AH, he announced his intention to make the pilgrimage, and Muslims poured into Makkah from every direction. The historians report a gathering of around 124,000 people — the largest audience he ever addressed.

On the 9th of Dhul-Hijjah, the Day of Arafah, he stood on the plain of Arafat and spoke. He began with words that told the crowd this was different: “O people, listen to my words, for I do not know whether I shall meet you again in this place after this year.” Within months, he would pass away in Madinah. The sermon is called “farewell” because it was one.

One honest note before the content: there is no single verbatim transcript of the sermon. It comes down to us through several narrations — most famously the long Hajj narration of Jabir ibn Abdillah in Sahih Muslim, with parts in Sahih al-Bukhari, Sunan al-Tirmidhi, Musnad Ahmad, and Ibn Hisham’s Sirah. The famous text you find online is a compilation of these reports. The themes below are what all of them agree on; the wording varies slightly between narrations.

1. Life, Property, and Honour Are Sacred

The sermon’s opening declaration set the frame for everything after it: “O people, your blood, your property, and your honour are sacred to you, as sacred as this day of yours, in this month of yours, in this land of yours.”

The comparison was deliberate. The Day of Arafah, the month of Dhul-Hijjah, and the city of Makkah were already sacred in the Arabs’ own reckoning. By measuring human life and property against them, the Prophet ﷺ gave the sanctity of the person a weight no listener could miss. This was a society where tribal raiding and revenge killing were normal; the sermon made the individual Muslim’s life inviolable — not by tribal treaty, but by divine command.

2. Usury and Blood Feuds: Abolished, Starting at Home

Two institutions of pre-Islamic Arabia were abolished outright — and in both cases, the Prophet ﷺ began with his own family, so no one could say the law was for others.

Usury (riba) is abolished. “All usury is abolished, but you may keep your capital — neither wronging nor being wronged.” The first usury he cancelled was that of his own uncle, Abbas ibn Abd al-Muttalib. The principle matters as much as the ruling: in Islam’s economic vision, money must not breed money while the borrower bears all the risk.

Blood feuds are abolished. “All blood feuds of the days of ignorance are abolished.” The first he cancelled was the blood of Ibn Rabiah ibn al-Harith, a child of his own clan killed in a tribal feud. A cycle of revenge that had run for generations was cut at its root — and cut, pointedly, where it cost his own family most.

3. The Rights of Women

The passage on women is among the most quoted of the sermon: “Fear Allah concerning women, for you have taken them as a trust from Allah, and intimacy with them has been made lawful by the word of Allah.”

The sermon affirmed both directions of the marital bond: women have rights over men, and men have rights over women — but the emphasis fell on kindness and responsibility toward wives. “Treat women well” was not a passing remark; in a society where female infanticide had only recently been outlawed and women had been treated as property, framing the wife as a trust (amanah) from Allah redefined the relationship entirely. For the full picture of how Islam frames these rights, the sermon itself remains the starting point — not later cultural practice.

4. One Brotherhood, No Racial Superiority

“All mankind is from Adam and Eve. An Arab has no superiority over a non-Arab, nor does a non-Arab have superiority over an Arab; a white person has no superiority over a black person, nor does a black person have superiority over a white person — except by piety and good action.”

This was spoken to an audience of Arabs and non-Arabs, former slaves and tribal chiefs, standing together in identical pilgrim garments. The declaration made equality a matter of creed, not courtesy — and it did so more than thirteen centuries before any modern human-rights declaration. It is also why the Farewell Pilgrimage itself is the sermon’s best illustration: the same rites, the same dress, the same plain, for everyone.

5. Satan’s Despair — and a Warning About Small Sins

“Indeed, Satan has despaired of ever being worshipped in this land of yours. But he is pleased to be obeyed in matters you consider small.”

The warning is subtle and practical. Open idolatry was finished in Arabia; the danger that remained was quieter — the small compromises, the minor disobediences, the sins people shrug at. The sermon treats them as the real battlefield after the great battle is won. It is the same logic as the rest of the sermon: the grand principles are settled; what remains is daily faithfulness.

6. Hold Fast to the Quran and the Sunnah

“I leave behind two things: if you hold fast to them, you will never go astray — the Book of Allah and my Sunnah.”

In the narration of Sahih Muslim, the wording is the Book of Allah; other narrations add the Sunnah of the Prophet ﷺ. Either way, the point is the same: the community’s anchor after his death would not be a person, a tribe, or a dynasty, but revelation and his example. The sermon was, in effect, handing the community its constitution and then stepping away.

7. “Have I Conveyed the Message?”

The sermon ended the way a prophet’s mission ends — with a question and a witness. “Have I conveyed the message?” The crowd answered: “Yes.” He raised his finger to the sky and said, “O Allah, bear witness.”

Soon after, the verse was revealed: “This day I have perfected for you your religion, and completed My favour upon you, and chosen Islam as your religion” (Quran 5:3). The companions understood it for what it was — the completion of a twenty-three-year mission, announced on the plain where it ended.

Why the Farewell Sermon Still Matters

The sermon is not only history. It is the charter Muslims return to whenever the community needs to remember its own foundations: that a person’s life and dignity are inviolable; that wealth must not exploit; that women are a trust, not property; that race confers no rank; and that guidance after the Prophet ﷺ lies in the Quran and his Sunnah, not in any later claimant.

It also explains why the Seerah matters as a whole. The Battle of Badr, eight years earlier, was the community’s first great test of survival — see our account of it here. The Farewell Sermon was its completion: the same community, now secure, receiving the principles it would live by. From survival to charter — that is the arc of the Seerah in two documents.

FAQs

Disclaimer: Educational purposes only — not a fatwa. Historical details follow the standard Seerah sources; wording of the sermon varies across narrations. When in doubt, consult a qualified scholar you trust.

About the author: Zakariya Shafi — Dars-e-Nizami (Wifaq-ul-Madaris), M.Phil Islamic Studies (BZU Multan), 15 years teaching Islamic studies, 10 years dawah work.