have been given to his statement. If the nosebleeding stops while some of the prayer time remains, and he becomes able to bow or prostrate, he is not required to repeat the prayer. If he used gestures because bowing or prostrating would harm him, he is like a sick person who cannot prostrate and therefore prays using gestures, then recovers while some of the prayer time remains: he need not repeat his prayer. If, however, he did so for fear that his clothes would become soaked with blood, this is an excuse permitting gestures by unanimous agreement. He must therefore be exempt from repeating the prayer, just like a traveller who, unaware of any water, performs dry ablution and subsequently finds water within the prayer time. The traveller need not repeat his prayer because his entitlement to dry ablution is unanimously acknowledged. This differs from the sick person and the person in fear, whose entitlement to dry ablution has been disputed, and from someone who prays in mud using gestures, since it has been held that he is not entitled to use gestures and must bow and prostrate in the mud, even if his clothes are ruined. That is no great matter to Allah. Indeed:

“The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, prostrated in water and mud, and finished the prayer with traces of water and mud on his forehead and nose.”

As for the second category, in which the bleeding is intermittent and stops: if it begins before he starts praying, he should delay the prayer until it stops, provided that the prescribed prayer time does not expire—when an object’s shadow reaches its own length for Zuhr, and twice its length for Asr, excluding the shadow present at noon. It has also been said that he should delay both prayers unless he fears that their time will expire altogether: that is, when the sun has become distinctly yellow and he fears that he will not be able to complete Zuhr and Asr before sunset. If he fears this, he should perform them before the time expires in whatever manner he can, even if only with gestures.

If the bleeding begins after he has started praying, there are two possibilities: either it is slight enough to be removed by rubbing it between his fingers, or it is profuse, dripping or flowing, and cannot be removed in this way. If it is slight enough to be removed by rubbing, he should rub it away and continue his prayer, whether praying alone, leading the prayer, or following an imam. There is no disagreement concerning this, in keeping with reports from a number of the early generations, including Sa‘īd ibn al-Musayyab and Sālim ibn ‘Abd Allāh. They would suffer nosebleeds during prayer until their fingers—that is, their fingertips—became stained with the blood coming from their noses; they would rub it away and continue praying. But if the blood extends beyond the fingertips and accumulates on the middle segments of the fingers in an amount equal to the area of a dirham, according to Ibn Habīb’s position, or greater than that area, according to ‘Alī ibn Ziyād’s report from Mālik, he must break off the prayer and begin anew,