and twenty; my grandfather al-Ḥusayn related to us, saying: ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad ibn ʿAlī al-Shāfiʿī related to us in the year 484 AH; he said: Muḥammad ibn al-Faḍl al-Farrāʾ in Egypt informed us; he said: Abū l-Fawāris Aḥmad ibn Muḥammad al-Ṣābūnī narrated to us in the year 348 AH; he said: al-Muzanī reported to us; he said: al-Shāfiʿī, from Mālik, from Nāfiʿ, from Ibn ʿUmar:
‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade wiṣāl (continuous fasting without breaking the fast).’
People said, ‘But you practise wiṣāl.’ He replied, ‘I am not like you; my Lord feeds me and gives me drink.’ (1)
With this same chain it is also related that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ spoke about Ramadan, saying: ‘Do not begin the fast until you sight the crescent, and do not break it until you sight it. If it is obscured from you, then calculate for it.’ (2)
And through this chain as well: ‘The Messenger of Allah ﷺ made the zakāt al-fiṭr of Ramadan obligatory upon the people—one ṣāʿ (roughly four double-handfuls) of dates or one ṣāʿ of barley—upon every free person and slave, male and female among the Muslims.’ (3) Agreed upon.
Ibn al-Farrāʾ informed us; he said: Ibn al-Bunn informed us; he said: my grandfather informed us; he said: ʿAlī ibn Muḥammad informed us; he said: Ibn Naẓīf said: Abū l-Fawāris al-Sindī told us, ‘I was born in Muḥarram of the year 245 AH, and I first heard hadith when I was ten years old.’
He said: ‘Al-Muzanī died in 264 AH, and al-Rabīʿ passed away in 270 AH.’
He added, ‘The two were foster-brothers, with six months between them in birth.’