For the wording of his ﷺ statement, “lā tushaddu ar-riḥāl … ” (1) admits two possible readings—negation and prohibition—because it can bear either sense. Should it be taken as a negation, its purport (2) is to deny the virtue and recommended nature of saddling one’s mount and setting out for any destination other than the three mosques (3). For were the physical acts themselves intended, their occurrence could not logically be denied; the negation must therefore relate to their merit and desirability, not to the act itself. This ruling is general for every place to which people may think that riding out and saddling mounts is a devotional act or a meritorious deed: other mosques, the visitation of the graves of the righteous, and anything analogous—indeed, it is broader than that.

Furthermore, the very predicate that is negated (4) must be affirmed for travel to the three mosques and for whatever else is exempted from that general ruling (5). This follows from the grammatical necessity that the implicit predicate negated at the beginning of the sentence be carried over to what follows the word “except”; otherwise, there would be no difference between what precedes the exception and what follows it—yet a difference is plainly intended. Accordingly (6), the denial of virtue and recommendation does not entail the denial of permissibility.

This is the line of argument adopted by those who consider such travel permissible: they view the expression as a pure negation and, on that basis, allow the shortening of prayers. If, however, the wording is read as a prohibition, the meaning would then be that he forbade saddling mounts