The Prophet ﷺ and Abu Bakr RA were guided to Madinah by Abdullah ibn Urayqit, a hired guide from a distant Bedouin tribe. He took them along a back road that the Quraysh did not know, circling down toward what is now Jeddah before turning toward Madinah. This way they avoided the main road, where the Quraysh were searching for them. The Quraysh had offered a reward of 100 camels for the Prophet ﷺ, dead or alive. Suraqa ibn Malik, the leader of the Banu Mudlij, heard that three riders had been seen, and he rode after them to win the reward. As he drew near, his horse sank into the ground and threw him. This happened three times. After the third time he gave up the chase, knowing that this was a force beyond him. He called out that he meant them no harm, and asked the Prophet ﷺ for a written promise of protection, which he was given. Abu Bakr RA asked him not to tell anyone about them, and Suraqa kept their secret.
This was the Prophet ﷺ's only Hajj after the Hijrah, and his last. He undertook it in the 10th year of the Hijrah. Once word went out that he intended to go, tens of thousands of people flocked to Madinah. They swelled the caravan the whole way to Makkah. The sahaba said they could see nothing but riders and people on foot in every direction. It was the largest gathering the Prophet ﷺ ever addressed, and most of those present are not known to us by name. He ﷺ left Madinah on 25 Dhu al-Qa'dah. He prayed and entered ihram at Dhu al-Hulayfah. He reached Makkah ten days later, on the 4th of Dhu al-Hijjah. He camped outside the city overnight and entered it the next morning. Just as the caravan was setting out from Dhu al-Hulayfah, Asma bint Umays RA gave birth to Muhammad ibn Abi Bakr there. The Prophet ﷺ told her to bathe, bandage herself, and enter ihram all the same. After performing tawaf and the sa'i, the Prophet ﷺ made an announcement at Marwah. Anyone who had not brought an animal for sacrifice, he said, should end their ihram and treat their pilgrimage as an Umrah. This was a new and startling instruction. The pilgrims had set out with different intentions. Some had come for Hajj alone, some for Hajj and Umrah together, and some for Umrah. Between them, they performed all three recognised forms of Hajj, known as Ifrad, Qiran and Tamattu'. The Prophet ﷺ had asked Ali RA to bring one hundred sacrificial camels from Yemen, and Ali RA now arrived with them. Ali RA found that Fatima RA had already come out of ihram on the Prophet ﷺ's instruction. But Ali RA had entered ihram intending to match whatever intention the Prophet ﷺ held, which was Qiran. So he stayed in ihram until the sacrifice. On the 8th of Dhu al-Hijjah, called Yawm al-Tarwiyah, the company moved to Mina. On the 9th, the Prophet ﷺ went on to Namirah and then to Arafah. On the way he passed by al-Mash'ar al-Haram at Muzdalifah. In pre-Islamic times the Quraysh had stopped there, so as not to go outside the sanctuary. The Prophet ﷺ went past it to stand on the open plain of Arafah itself, which is the essence of the Hajj. He stood there making du'a from just after Zuhr until sunset. Then he moved on, slowly and deliberately, to Muzdalifah. There he prayed Maghrib and Isha together and rested until Fajr. Sawda bint Zam'a RA was elderly and slow-moving. She asked permission to leave Muzdalifah early to avoid the crowds, and it was given. The Prophet ﷺ also sent the weak members of his family ahead during the night, and Ibn Abbas RA was among them. This is the basis for the ruling in fiqh that the elderly and the weak may leave before everyone else. From Muzdalifah the Prophet ﷺ went to Mina and stoned Jamrah al-Kubra. He sacrificed 63 camels with his own hand. Ibn al-Qayyim observes that this number matched the years of his life. Then he had Ali RA sacrifice the remaining 37 of the 100. After that he returned to Makkah for tawaf al-ifadah. There he drank from the Zamzam water that the Banu Abdul Muttalib drew for him. The Prophet ﷺ stayed in Mina through the days of Tashriq. He spent three nights there, one more than most pilgrims do, and left on the 13th. Aisha RA had begun her menses just before entering Makkah. She was told to perform every rite except tawaf. Once she was pure again and had completed her Hajj, she asked to perform an Umrah as well, like the Prophet ﷺ's other wives. So she was sent with her brother, Abd al-Rahman ibn Abi Bakr RA, to enter ihram at Tan'im for it. Then she rejoined the caravan back to Madinah. The name "Hajjat al-Wada'", the Farewell Hajj, was already in use during the Prophet ﷺ's own lifetime. On Yawm al-Nahr, while he was addressing the people, he asked Allah again and again to bear witness. The sahaba sensed that he was saying goodbye to them, though they did not yet fully grasp it. Later writers estimated the crowd at a round 100,000, but this figure is a guess. Every hadith on the fiqh of Hajj in the books goes back in the end to this one pilgrimage. That is because it was the only Hajj he performed after the Hijrah. On the night of the 13th, the last day of Hajj, the Prophet ﷺ performed Tawaf al-Wada', the Farewell Tawaf. Then he set out on the journey back to Madinah, and he arrived there in Dhu al-Hijjah, 10 AH. This was his final journey. Once he entered Madinah, he never left it again before his death.
During the Hijrah, Suraqa ibn Malik chased after the Prophet ﷺ on horseback. According to the report of Ibn Abd al-Barr, as Suraqa turned to leave, the Prophet ﷺ said to him, "How will you be the day that you put on the bracelets of Kisra?" Kisra was the title of the emperor of Persia. Within a few years of the Prophet ﷺ's death, the Persian (Sassanid) Empire fell after the Battle of al-Qadisiyyah, and Persepolis was conquered. Its treasures, including the bracelets of Kisra, were sent to Umar ibn al-Khattab RA in Madinah. Umar seated Suraqa in his own chair and placed the bracelets on his hands in front of the congregation.