food and drink.
- Deliberate vomiting. Abu Dawud (2380) and al-Tirmidhi (720) record on the authority of Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet ﷺ said, “Whoever forces himself to vomit deliberately must make up the fast.”
These, then, are the matters unanimously agreed upon as nullifiers of the fast, and we have already affirmed that cupping—and anything similar that intentionally draws a large amount of blood from the body—likewise breaks the fast.
The second category consists of practices over which the scholars have differed. Some hold that they reach the inner cavity and therefore invalidate the fast; others respond that they are neither food nor drink nor nourishment, that they provide the body with no sustenance, and that no proof designates them as fast-breakers, so they do not nullify the fast. Examples include: kohl, eye-drops, ear-drops, nasal drops, rectal enemas, urethral drops, medicinal injections, the inhaler used by asthma patients, medication applied to deep abdominal or cranial wounds, and swallowing phlegm regardless of the point from which it originates.
Scholars disagree about whether these things break the fast. Some maintain that all of them do so because they penetrate the body and reach the internal cavity; others say that only some of them have this effect.
This divergence stems from their independent reasoning, from how they conceive the impact of these substances on the fasting person, and from the principle—accepted by some—that anything reaching the cavity invalidates the fast. Among those who regard all of these as fast-breakers is the well-known position in the school of Imam Ahmad: his followers apply the rule that whatever enters the body’s cavity by any route is treated like the established nullifiers.
By contrast, Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah, his student Ibn al-Qayyim, and many hadith scholars who adhere closely to the transmitted reports do not consider these and similar matters to break the fast.