539 – ʿAbū Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Do not precede Ramadan by fasting a day or two, except a man who is in the habit of fasting; let him fast.” Agreed upon (1).

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Glossary of terms in the ḥadīth:

• la taqaddamū: the particle la is prohibitive; therefore the verb that follows is put in the jussive.
• tuqaddimū: originally tatqaddamū; one of the two tā’s was omitted. The meaning is: “Do not fast a day or two before Ramadan in anticipation of the month.”
• Ramadan: al-Zamakhsharī said that “Ramadan” is the verbal noun of ramiḍa, “to be scorching hot,” derived from ramḍāʾ. The month was given this name and became a proper noun that is diptotic because it is both a proper noun and ends with the additional alif and nūn. It was so called because people are seared by the heat of hunger and the hardship they endure while fasting in it. Another view is that when the Arabs transferred the ancient names of the months into Arabic, they renamed them after the seasons in which they happened to fall; this month coincided with intense heat, hence the name.
• yaṣūmu: linguistically, ṣawm (fasting) means abstention; anyone who refrains from food, speech, or anything else is called a fasting person in the linguistic sense. In the legal sense it is abstention from eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, and all other nullifiers, from the second dawn until sunset, together with the intention.
• kāna yaṣūmu ṣawman: that is, he is accustomed to fasting on specific days, and one of those happens to fall on the last day or two of Shaʿbān.
• illā rajul: Muslim’s wording is “except a man,” which follows the normal Arabic grammatical rule because it is a connected exception from a mentioned antecedent. Some narrations in al-Bukhārī read: “except that there be a man…,” where yakūn (“be”) is a complete verb.