Chapter: The Prayer of the Traveller and the Sick

Introduction

Ibn al-Qayyim states in Iʿlām al-Muwaqqiʿīn:
“Allah has shown special leniency to the traveller while on his journey: He allowed him to break the fast and to shorten the prayer. This reflects the Lawgiver’s wisdom, for travel in and of itself is ‘a portion of torment’; by its very nature it involves hardship and exertion. Even if the traveller were among the most comfortable of people, he still endures physical strain and fatigue. Out of His mercy to His servants and His graciousness toward them, Allah lightened the prayer for them by one half and accepted from them the remaining half.

“He did not deprive them of the benefit of worship by abolishing it altogether during travel, nor did He impose it upon them in travel with the same strictness as when they are resident. As for residence, there is no reason to drop the obligation or delay it; the kinds of hardship and preoccupation that arise while one is at home are too numerous and unbounded to regulate. If a dispensation were granted to everyone who was busy or found matters difficult, the duty would disappear entirely; and if it were granted to some but not others, the matter would become incoherent, for no single, definite characteristic exists by which to distinguish when a concession is allowed and when it is not—unlike the clear case of travel.”

Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī said:
“One of the maxims of the Sharia is al-mashaqqah tajlib al-taysīr (‘hardship calls for ease’). Since travel is a piece of torment that deprives a person of his sleep, comfort, and settled routine, the Lawgiver attached to it the concessions He ordained. Even if, for argument’s sake, travel were free of such hardships, the rulings would still remain, because legal rulings are linked to their complete underlying causes even if those causes happen to be absent in some particular instances.”