545 – ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) said: “The Prophet ﷺ once entered upon me and asked, ‘Do you have anything to eat?’ We answered, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Then, in that case, I am fasting.’ On another day he came to us and we said, ‘We have been given some ḥays.’ He said, ‘Show it to me, for I began this morning fasting,’ and he then ate.” Narrated by Muslim (1).

Vocabulary of the ḥadith
– “Then I am fasting”: meaning, with respect to the remainder of this day of mine.
– ḥays: a confection made of dates, dried curd, and clarified butter, mixed and kneaded together.
– “Show it to me”: an imperative from the root meaning “to see”; the nūn is for phonetic protection, the yāʾ that follows is the first-person pronoun (the first object), while the second object is an implied third-person pronoun.

Points derived from the two ḥadiths
1 – Hadith 544 indicates that fasting absolutely requires an intention, as affirmed in al-Bukhārī (1) and Muslim (1907) where the Prophet ﷺ said, “Actions are only by intentions, and each person shall have only what he intended.” al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr states that this is the unanimous position of the scholars.
2 – al-Sharḥ al-Iqnāʿ explains: the locus of intention is the heart; whoever thinks to himself that he will fast tomorrow has intended. Eating or drinking at night with the aim of fasting suffices, but a fast begun with an intention formed during the day is invalid.
3 – The phrase “he has no fast” is a negation of legal existence: fasting must cover the whole day, and whoever does not intend it until after dawn has left part of the day without intention.