Scholarly disagreement:
The jurists differed over the permissibility of combining prayers, producing three opinions:
-
The majority—including the Imams al-Shafiʿi and Ahmad—permit both advanced and delayed combination between Zuhr and ʿAsr and between Maghrib and ʿIshaʾ.
-
Malik, in one of the two narrations from him, and Ibn Hazm allow delayed combination only, not advanced.
-
Abu Hanifa and his two companions hold that it is never permissible, except for a notional combination (jamʿ ṣūrī): the first prayer is postponed to the very end of its time, while the second is performed at the very beginning of its time, so the two are offered consecutively—the first at the end of its period and the second at the start of its period.
The majority add that combining is permissible in all cases, whether the traveller is encamped or pressing on with the journey.
Their evidence is the report in al-Muwattaʾ (330) from Muʿadh: “The Prophet ﷺ once delayed the prayer during the expedition of Tabuk, then came out and prayed Zuhr and ʿAsr together; he then went back in, came out again, and prayed Maghrib and ʿIshaʾ together.”
Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: “This hadith has an authentic chain of transmission.”
Al-Shafiʿi in al-Umm and al-Baji in his commentary on al-Muwattaʾ noted that the Prophet’s entering and exiting could only have occurred while he was encamped and not pressing on, which is a decisive rebuttal of those who claim that combining is permissible only when the journey is in active progress.
Ibn al-Qayyim and a group of scholars, by contrast, restrict the permissibility of combining to times of necessity—specifically, when the traveller is actively on the move.
Their proof is the hadith of Ibn ʿUmar: “Whenever he was pressing on with the journey, he would combine Maghrib and ʿIshaʾ, saying, ‘The Prophet ﷺ used to combine them whenever he was pressing on with the journey.’” It was reported by al-Bukhari (1711) and Muslim (703). Yet the majority infer from