About The Book

The Goals and Manners of Making Hajj is Habib Ali al-Jifri's compact spiritual guide to the pilgrimage — short enough to be carried in a coat pocket on the journey itself, deep enough to reshape how the pilgrim understands what they are doing. Where most Hajj manuals concentrate on the legal mechanics — what to wear, what to say, where to walk — this book asks the prior question: why. What is the inner work each of the rites performs on the heart? What is the meaning, beneath the form, of the tawaf, the say, the standing at Arafat, the stoning, the sacrifice?

Across 110 pages, al-Jifri unfolds the Baalawi tradition's reading of the Hajj as a journey of return — from the dispersion of selfhood to the unity of standing before God. He treats the adab the pilgrim should adopt before setting out, during each rite, and on the return; and he warns against the spiritual hazards (riya, distraction, harshness toward fellow pilgrims) that empty the journey of its meaning. Suitable as a pre-Hajj study text in a circle of friends preparing together, or as a daily reading during the days of pilgrimage themselves.

About The Author

Habib Ali al-Jifri (b. 1971) is a Hadrami Baalawi sayyid scholar, founder of the Tabah Foundation in Abu Dhabi, and among the most widely-heard contemporary voices of the traditional Sunni Islamic revival. His writings on the spiritual dimensions of the rites of Islam — Hajj, salat, fasting — have been translated into many languages and circulate widely in study circles around the world.