حج
Ḥajj
The pilgrimage to Mecca, required once in a lifetime of every Muslim who is able, and the fifth pillar.
What it means
“Pilgrimage to the House is a duty owed to God by people who are able to undertake it” (3:97). Pilgrims enter a state of iḥrām, wearing two plain sheets, circle the Kaaba (ṭawāf), walk between Safa and Marwa, stand at Arafat on the ninth of Dhu al-Hijja, spend the night at Muzdalifa, throw stones at the pillars at Mina, offer an animal (hadī), shave or cut the hair (ḥalq), and make a farewell circling. Those who join the pilgrimage to the lesser pilgrimage in the same trip perform tamattuʿ.
Often misunderstood as
That the rites are pagan, adopted from the idol-worshippers of Mecca.
What the sources say
Muslims hold that the rites were set by Abraham, who built the House (2:125–127; 22:26–29), and that the pagan Arabs corrupted them. The Quran corrects the practices: “pour forth from where the people pour forth” (2:199), and there is to be no quarrel in the Hajj (2:197). Non-Muslims may not enter the sacred area of Mecca (9:28). The sacrificial animal is meant for the poor, the Quran says, and “neither its meat nor its blood reaches God, but piety reaches Him” (22:37). Before the Prophet’s mission, Zayd ibn Amr, a monotheist of Mecca, was reported to have refused food offered to idols, and the Prophet is reported in Sahih al-Bukhari to have declined meat sacrificed to idols.
Term and Arabic as listed in Ismail al Faruqi, Toward Islamic English (International Institute of Islamic Thought, 1995), p. 28, listed as ḤAJJ. The definition is restated here.