Explanation of the hadith of Ibn 'Abbas, who said: A woman from Khath'am came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and said: O Messenger of Allah, the obligation of Hajj upon His servants in

The Shaykh : The first text we find on this matter is the hadith in al-Bukhari regarding that woman from Khath'am who asked the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) on the Day of Sacrifice during the Farewell Pilgrimage. She said: O Messenger of Allah, my father is an old man who cannot stay on the saddle, and the obligation of Allah, Hajj, has overtaken him. Should I perform Hajj on his behalf? He (peace be upon him) said: .
This hadith is not permissible to understand in an absolute sense without the restriction that came within the question, and upon which the answer was based. You have heard the woman describe her father's condition with attributes, the first of which is that he is an old man who is decrepit, and necessarily, as she said, he cannot stay on the saddle, meaning he is unable to ride the she-camel and continue his journey to the Sacred House of Allah, because he leans and falls to the ground and dies.
And the obligation of Allah, Hajj, has overtaken him, meaning the obligation of Hajj came upon him when it was made obligatory, and he was an old man who could not stay on the saddle, because the obligation of Hajj was in the last of his life, may Allah's peace and blessings be upon him, according to the most likely of the opinions. And therefore the Hajj of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) was delayed until the last year of his life. So a man who is overtaken by Hajj in the prime of his youth, and who has money, leisure, and energy, and nothing prevents him from hastening to Hajj absolutely, except his preoccupation with his trade, his buying and selling, his family, and his children, and the like of the adornments of this worldly life, has no excuse for delaying Hajj. Then he dies in his middle age, or rather as an old man, without having performed the Hajj of Islam absolutely, and he has no excuse as we mentioned. And he may be one of those people who traveled to Europe, to the lands of disbelief and misguidance, repeatedly and repeatedly, in the way of his trade and in the way of expanding his wealth. Then he dies, and he has left behind a great deal of wealth, and every one of his children has become rich because of him after his death, and they have inherited his wealth. They take out two or three thousand pounds with ease, just as if the poor man took out a dirham. This is a Hajj on behalf of our father. No one benefits anything from this Hajj absolutely, neither the one who performed the substitute Hajj, nor the one for whom it was performed, who is the deceased father, a sinner and an open sinner, if he did not die a disbeliever. For Allah, Mighty and Majestic, indicated in the previously mentioned verse by His saying: . This one who did not perform Hajj, it is possible to imagine that he turned away from Hajj out of disbelief in Hajj, a disbelief of the heart and belief. It is possible to imagine this, just as it is imagined for one who leaves the prayer. And it is possible, may Allah protect us, that he denied Hajj. And I know some of the young Muslim people who performed Hajj and then regretted his Hajj. So there is no doubt in his disbelief and his apostasy from his religion, because he found there manifestations of sin which he interpreted as the orientalist books, the enemies of religion, interpret them, as manifestations of polytheism, such as kissing the Black Stone, for example. And he saw there the shortcoming of the Muslims because of their ignorance and because of their lack of upbringing, from the gathering of filth and dirt and flies, and so on. So he returned, may Allah protect us, regretting what he had performed Hajj to, the Sacred House of Allah.
So this one who died rich and did not perform the Hajj of Islam, it is possible to imagine that he is not a disbeliever regarding Hajj, but rather he was lax in it. So if someone else performs Hajj on his behalf, what does this Hajj benefit him, when he died, as we said, an open sinner? And Hajj is like prayer; the first intended purpose of it is a trial from Allah for His servants, as He said: . And the intended purpose is the purification of the soul of the one who performs obedience to Allah. So this one died and his soul was not purified by Hajj, because he did not perform Hajj, and his soul was not purified even if all the people performed Hajj on his behalf, because: . So the substitute Hajj in this case is not prescribed absolutely. It is not permissible for the pilgrim to take the cost of Hajj if he knows that he is performing Hajj on behalf of this type of people who were obligated to perform Hajj and were able to do so but did not perform it due to their preoccupation with the world.
The woman from Khath'am described her father with attributes... that do not enable this father to perform Hajj. So whoever is in this state, it is possible to perform Hajj on his behalf. This is one of the forms of the prescribed substitute Hajj.
A second form: the same type of person, a person who did not perform Hajj until he was on the verge of death due to an illness that afflicted him, so he regretted his shortcoming and tasked a person to perform Hajj on his behalf and gave him the maintenance. So this one performs Hajj on his behalf, because he is making up for what he missed in the last of his life, so he is still within the scope of obligation, and it is not so after death, as he (peace and blessings be upon him) said: . So this one who bequeathed that Hajj be performed on his behalf, Hajj is performed on his behalf, and this is a type of the prescribed substitute Hajj.