or his hair, and the like. Such seeking of blessing applies only to the Prophet ﷺ; for anyone else it is forbidden.

• Benefit:
  The hadiths that command taking sahūr, encourage it, recommend delaying it, and urge hastening the ifṭār are mass-transmitted; this was affirmed by al-Ṭaḥāwī and others.

Sahūr is not obligatory; Ibn al-Munḏir and others have cited consensus on that point.

Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said: The hadiths that call for hastening the ifṭār and delaying the sahūr are both sound and mass-transmitted.

The Almighty’s words, “Then complete the fast until nightfall” (Q 2:187), establish a legal ruling that one is to break the fast at sunset.

This is further supported by the report in al-Bukhārī (1853) and Muslim (1100) from ʿUmar, that the Prophet ﷺ said: “When night advances from this side, daylight recedes from that side, and the sun has set—the fasting person has broken his fast.” Shortly, God willing, we shall explain that the verse and the hadith merely indicate that the time for ifṭār has begun, not that the act of breaking the fast has already occurred.