Reviving the Sacred House (the hajj as a collective duty)

Ihya' of the Sacred House. The word ihya' means to make a thing alive; for the jurists, reviving the House of God means keeping it inhabited by the hajj, and some include the umra, likening a place kept full to a living thing and a neglected one to the dead. ¹ General rule. The Malikis, Shafi'is and Hanbalis hold that reviving the Sacred House through the hajj is a collective duty (fard kifaya) every year for the Muslims, and this does not contradict its being a personal duty once in a lifetime for whoever is able; the matter is that when no group of Muslims performs the hajj, obligatory or voluntary, through which the rite is visible each year, all are sinful, since the greatest purpose of building the Ka'ba is the hajj, so reviving it is by the hajj. ² Ibn Abbas is reported to have said: if people stopped visiting this House for one year alone, they would not be given rain. ² The umra is likewise in this for the Shafi'is and one Maliki view. ² Circling, staying in retreat, prayer and the like do not replace it, though they are obligatory in the Sacred Mosque as a collective duty, since honour and the reviving of the place come through all these. ² Applying this, the Malikis hold that the ruler of the Muslims must send a group each year to hold the season; if there is no ruler, the community of Muslims must. ² The author found no Hanafi text on this. ² Where the subject is treated. The jurists discussed the ruling on reviving the Sacred House at the start of the book of jihad, because of the collective obligation, and some put it at the start of the book of hajj; the Imam al-Zarkashi devoted a work to mosque law, "Ilam al-Sajid bi-Ahkam al-Masajid". ³