Texts: al-Ḏahab al-masbūk between Narratives, Stories, and Meanings

Just as the Prophet’s Farewell Pilgrimage of 10/632 (ḥiğğat al-wadāʿ) had established itself as a normative paradigm in the social and cultural realities of the performance and leadership of the annual pilgrimage, so did its remembrance and reproduction in Arabic writings on theḥağğfrom the seventh century onwards. Already at an early date in the Islamic community’s complex socio-cultural history the Farewell Pilgrimage was singled out as a separate and important subject of more or less coherence among the many stories (ahbār) of the Prophet’s life and of the early Muslim community’s history. These stories of Mu.ammad’s actions and