Now, having ordered all matters, Mahomet raised his hands to Heaven and called Allah to witness that he had completed his task: 

“This day have I perfected your religion for you.”

The supreme moment came and fled, and the Prophet descended once more into the plain and journeyed again to the valley of Mecca, where, according to immemorial tradition, he cast stones, or rather small pebbles, at the rock of the Devil’s Corner, symbolic of the defeat of the powers of darkness by puny and assailed mankind.  Thereafter he slew his victims in thankful and devout spirit, and the Greater Pilgrimage was completed.  In token he shaved his head, pared his nails, and removed the pilgrim’s robe; then, coming before the people, he exhorted them further, enjoining upon them the strict observance of daily prayers, the fast of Ramadan, the rites of Pilgrimage, and all the essential ceremonial of the Muslim faith.  He abolished also with one short verse of the Kuran the intercalary year, which had been in use among the Faithful during the whole of his Medinan rule.  The Believers were now subject to the fluctuation of their months, so that their years follow a perpetually changing cycle, bearing no relation to the solar seasons.

When the exhortation was ended Mahomet departed to Mecca, and there he encircled the Kaaba and entered its portals for prayer.  But of this last act he repented later, inasmuch as it would not be possible hereafter for every Muslim to do so, and he had desired to perform in all particulars the exact ceremonies incumbent upon the Faithful for all the future years.  He now made an ending of all his observances, and with every rite fulfilled, at the head of his vast concourse, summoned by his tireless will and held together by his overmastering zeal, the Prophet returned to his governmental city, ready to take up anew the reins of his temporal ruling, with the sense of fine things fittingly achieved, a great purpose accomplished, which rendered him as much at peace as his fiery temperament and the flame of his activity could compass.

Fulfilment had come with the performance of the Greater Pilgrimage, but still his state demanded his personal government.  Death alone could still his ardent pulses and bring about his relinquishment of command over the kingdom that was his—­death that was even now winging his silent way nearer, and whose shadow had almost touched the fount of the Prophet’s earthly life.

In such manner the Greater Pilgrimage was fulfilled, and the burden of its accomplishing is the Muslim reverence for ceremony.  The ritual in all its forgotten superstition and immemorial tradition appealed most potently to the emotions of every Believer, all the more so because it had not been imposed upon him as a new and untried ceremony by a religious reformer, but came to him with all its hallowed sanctity fresh upon it, to be bound up inseparably with his religious life by its purification under the Prophet’s guidance.