As for those who were left to choose, that is on account of ʿĀʾishah’s report in which she said:

“Hamzah ibn ʿAmr al-Aslamī asked the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) about fasting while travelling. He replied, ‘If you wish, then fast; and if you wish, then break your fast.’”

Muslim records the tradition.

The third issue concerns the scope of the concession: Is a traveller allowed to break his fast only on a journey of a fixed distance, or on any journey whatsoever? The scholars have differed:
• The majority hold that the dispensation applies only during travel of the sort for which the prayers may be shortened, each school defining that distance according to its own criteria.
• Another group—the Ẓāhirīs—maintain that one may break the fast on any excursion to which the word “travel” can be applied, however short it may be.

The cause of their disagreement lies in the tension between the literal wording and the perceived rationale. The plain sense of the verse—“Whoever among you is sick or on a journey, then let him make up the same number of days later on” (al-Baqarah 2:184)—covers everyone to whom the term “traveller” applies. The intelligible wisdom behind the license, however, is the removal of hardship; and because the Companions appear to have agreed on fixing a limit, the distance for fasting was analogised to the distance that permits shortening the prayer.

With respect to illness that allows one to break the fast, they also disagreed:
• Some, among them Mālik, said it is the sickness for which fasting entails real hardship or necessity.
• Others, including Aḥmad, said it is illness of the more common, recognizable sort.
• A third group ruled that anyone to whom the name “sick person” applies may break his fast.
The reason for this divergence is exactly the same as that which underlies their dispute over the definition of travel.

The fourth issue: When may the traveller break the fast, and when must he refrain?
• Some said he may break it on the very day he leaves, a view reported from al-Shaʿbī, al-Ḥasan, and Aḥmad.
• Another party—comprising the jurists of the major cities—held that he may not break it that day. A number of scholars recommended that anyone who knows he will reach his destination the same day enter the town while fasting. Some were stricter than others, yet none required expiation from one who arrived having broken the fast.

They also differed about a person who enters the town after part of the day has elapsed. Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī said he continues not fasting for the rest of the day, whereas Abū Ḥanīfah and his companions said he must abstain from food—and the same ruling, they added, applies to a menstruating woman who becomes pure during the day.

The root of their disagreement over the time at which the traveller breaks his fast is the apparent conflict between transmitted evidence and rational consideration. As for the evidence, it is established in the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿAbbās that “the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) fasted until he reached al-Kadīd, then he broke his fast …”