The “hums”: Quraysh’s innovations around the Sanctuary

The “hums”: Quraysh’s superstitious rigor

Ibn Ishaq mentioned what Quraysh had innovated in giving themselves the name of “hums”, that is, rigor in religion and intransigence. They revered the Sanctuary excessively, to the point of imposing on themselves, because of it, not to leave it for the night of Arafat. They said: “We are the people of the Sanctuary and the neighbors of Allah’s House.” So they did not stand at Arafat, although they knew it was one of Ibrahim’s stations (peace be upon him), so as not to depart from the rule they had fixed in this corrupt innovation.

The hums’s prohibitions and the pilgrims’ naked tawaf

They did not store dried curd or butter, did not grease themselves with fat while in ihram, entered no tent of hair, and sheltered, if they sheltered, only under tents of leather. They forbade pilgrims and residents, as long as they themselves were in consecration, to eat anything but Quraysh’s food and to circle the Kaaba in anything but Quraysh’s garments. If someone found no garment of a humsi man : that is, Quraysh, their descendants, and those of Kinana and Khuza’a who entered with them : he circled naked, even a woman. That is why, when a woman’s tawaf time came, she would place her hand over her private part and say:

“Today, a part appears or all, … and what appears of it, I do not make lawful.”

If someone, generously disposed, found a humsi’s garment and circled in his own clothes, it befell him, at the end of the tawaf, to discard it: neither he nor anyone else would make use of it after that. The Arabs called those garments “al-laqa”. A poet said:

“Enough sorrow, they repeat over him, as if he were … a laqa, before the circling throngs, forbidden.”

The Quran corrects Quraysh’s innovation

Ibn Ishaq said: they remained thus until Allah sent Muhammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) and sent down upon him the Quran in reply to what they had innovated: “Then flow on from where the people flow on, and seek Allah’s forgiveness. Indeed, Allah is Forgiving and Merciful,” that is: the mass of the Arabs, from Arafat. We have already mentioned that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him) used to stand at Arafat before a success from Allah was granted him, and Allah sent down upon him a reply to what they had forbidden the people of garment and food:

“O children of Adam, wear your adornment in every place of prayer. And eat and drink, and do not commit excess; indeed, He does not love those who commit excess. Say: Who has forbidden the adornment of Allah which He produced for His servants and the good things of provision?”

Sura al-A’raf, 31-32

Ziyad al-Bakkaï related, from Ibn Ishaq: and I do not know whether this innovation was before the Year of the Elephant or after it.