the additional wording found in those hadiths—an addition transmitted by a trustworthy narrator is admissible—and because travel is by its very nature a situation of hardship, whether one is halted or on the move; the concession therefore applies broadly and was instituted only to make matters easy.

As for Abū Ḥanīfa’s position that only the notional combination (jamʿ ṣūrī) is allowed, the sound Sunnah offers it no support.

Points of Benefit

Benefit One: The author has so far discussed combining on account of travel, yet other excuses also permit it. Among them is rain: al-Bukhārī (543) relates that “the Prophet ﷺ combined Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ on a rainy night.” Here the concession is confined to Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ and does not extend to Ẓuhr and ʿAṣr, a ruling upheld by a number of scholars.

Another excuse is illness: Muslim (705) reports that “the Prophet ﷺ combined Ẓuhr with ʿAṣr and Maghrib with ʿIshāʾ, when there was neither fear, nor rain, nor travel.” It has likewise been established that a woman experiencing chronic bleeding may combine, and that is a form of illness.

Combining for these and similar excuses is permitted by Mālik, Aḥmad, Isḥāq, and al-Ḥasan, as well as by several Shāfiʿī scholars, among them al-Khaṭṭābī and al-Nawawī.

Benefit Two: The scholars differ over the journey that entitles one to combine. Al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad set it at two moderate days’ travel—sixteen farsakhs, roughly 77 kilometres. The Ẓāhirīs, Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyya, Ibn al-Qayyim, and al-Muwaffaq in al-Mughnī, however, maintain that any journey commonly regarded as travel permits combining; it is not bound to a specific distance, and the narrations that fix such limits are, in their view, not authentic.

Benefit Three: The majority hold that refraining from combining is better than combining, except at ʿArafah and Muzdalifah, where the benefit is clear. Shortening (qaṣr), by contrast, is an established Sunnah, and performing it is preferable to leaving it.