Specification is obligatory in every mandatory fast. In Ramadan, the most complete wording is: “I intend to fast tomorrow as the performance of the obligatory fast of this year’s Ramadan for Allah Most High.” Whether one must also mention “performance,” “obligation,” and “for Allah Most High” is the very debate recorded under the rules of prayer; the sounder view is that identifying the year itself is unnecessary.
If, on the night of 30 Shaʿbān, a person says, “I intend to fast tomorrow for Ramadan, should it prove to be from it,” and the next day does turn out to be Ramadan, the fast does not count for him unless he actually believed it was Ramadan on the word of someone he trusts—whether that be a slave, a woman, or discerning children. By contrast, if on the night of 30 Ramadan he intends, “I will fast tomorrow if it is still Ramadan,” the intention is valid if the following day is indeed of Ramadan.
When the calendar is uncertain and a person, after personal effort, fasts for an entire month, that month suffices if it coincides with the period immediately after Ramadan, and on the sounder view it is considered a make-up fast (qadāʾ). If the month he observed is one day short while the real Ramadan was complete, he must add another day. If he mistakenly fasted before the actual month and then lives to see the real Ramadan, he must fast Ramadan; otherwise, according to the newer opinion, making it up is required.
If a menstruating woman intends to fast the next day before her bleeding ends, and the blood stops during the night, the fast is valid provided that—by nightfall—most of her menstrual period, or (on the sounder view) the span of her usual habit, has elapsed.
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A condition of fasting is abstention from sexual intercourse and from self-induced vomiting. The preponderant opinion is that deliberately causing oneself to vomit nullifies the fast even when one is certain that nothing of it returned to the stomach, whereas involuntary vomiting does no harm. The same ruling, on the stronger opinion, applies to dislodging phlegm and spitting it out. If phlegm descends from the head and reaches the visible part of the mouth, he must extract it and spit it out; if, though able, he leaves it until it reaches the stomach, his fast is broken on the sounder view.
Scholars differ over what constitutes reaching an interior "cavity." One view adds that the cavity must have the faculty of transforming food or medicine. On either view, the interior of the brain, the stomach, the intestines, and the bladder are all cavities whose fast is broken when reached by snuffing, eating, an enema, or the penetration of a stomach or head wound, and the like. Instilling drops into the inner ear or into the urethra likewise nullifies the fast, according to the dominant opinion.
For a substance to invalidate the fast it must enter through an open passage. Thus, oil absorbed through the skin or kohl applied to the eyes—even if its taste is later felt in the throat—does not harm the fast. Intention is also a factor: if a fly, mosquito, road dust, or sifted flour particles reach the stomach unintentionally, the fast is not broken.
Swallowing saliva while it remains in its natural place does not invalidate the fast, but if it emerges from the mouth and is then taken back in and swallowed, or if one wets a thread with saliva and then returns it to the mouth while separable moisture clings to it, or if one swallows saliva mixed with another substance or with impurity, the fast is nullified. Simply gathering one’s saliva in the mouth and swallowing it does not invalidate the fast on the sounder view.
If water from rinsing the mouth or nose reaches the stomach, the school maintains that, when this happens because of excess