Answer
Wa `alaykum as-Salamu wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh.
In the Name of Allah, Most Gracious, Most Merciful.
All praise and thanks are due to Allah, and peace and blessings be upon His Messenger.
In this fatwa:
Standing at any place of Arafah is sufficient and you are not required to climb the Mountain of Ar-Rahmah (Mercy).
In his well-known book, Fiqh As-Sunnah, the late Azharite scholar Sheikh Sayyed Sabiq states the following:
A pilgrim may spend the Day of Arafah anywhere within the bounds of Arafah, for all of it is equally good for encamping (on this particular day) except the bottom of the valley called Urnah to the west of Arafah.
There is a consensus that spending the Day of Arafah at Urnah is not sufficient to fulfill the condition of staying at Arafah. Spending time near the rocks or as close to them as possible is commended.
The Prophet (peace be upon him) stopped at this place and said, “I have stopped here, but the whole of Arafah is a stopping place (for the Day of Arafah).”(Ahmad, Muslim, and Abu Dawud from Jabir)
Climbing the Mountain of Ar-Rahmah or the belief that standing on it is better than standing in any other place is wrong, nor does doing so represent a Sunnah of the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him).
Allah Almighty knows best.
Editor’s note: This fatwa is from Ask the Scholar’s archive and was originally published at an earlier date.