He understood by “ifrād” the mere singling out of the acts of Ḥajj, not the special form of ifrād (1) adopted by the followers of al-Shāfiʿī—namely, to perform Ḥajj first and then perform ʿUmrah afterwards during the remaining days of Dhū al-Ḥijjah.

The statement of al-Shāfiʿī:
“ Mālik related to us, from Ṣadaqah ibn Yasār, from Ibn ʿUmar, that he said: ‘For me to perform ʿUmrah before Ḥajj and to offer a sacrifice is dearer to me than to perform ʿUmrah after Ḥajj in Dhū al-Ḥijjah.’ ”

[The report of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr]
Imām Aḥmad (2) said: “Abū Aḥmad—meaning al-Zubayrī—narrated to us; Yūnus ibn al-Ḥārith narrated to us, from ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ combined the two rites only out of fear of being barred from the House, and he said: ‘If it does not become a Ḥajj, then let it be an ʿUmrah.’ ”

This ḥadīth is odd in both chain and wording; Imām Aḥmad alone transmits it. Aḥmad also said of this Yūnus ibn al-Ḥārith al-Thaqafī: “His ḥadīths are unsettled,” and he declared him weak; the same judgement was given by Yaḥyā ibn Maʿīn in one of his reports and by al-Nasāʾī.

As for the text itself, the statement: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ combined only out of fear of being turned away from the House”—who, one might ask, was going to bar him from the House when Allah had firmly established Islam for him, opened the Sacred City, and when, in the plains of Minā during the previous season, it had been proclaimed that no idolater was to make Ḥajj after that year and that no one was to circumambulate the House naked? Moreover, some forty thousand were with him at the Farewell Pilgrimage.

Thus the words, “out of fear of being barred from the House,” are no more puzzling than the remark of the Commander of the Believers ʿUthmān to ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib when ʿAlī said to him, “You know that we performed tamattuʿ with the Messenger of Allah ﷺ.” He replied, “Indeed, but we were afraid.” (9) I do not know to what this fear can be ascribed, or from what quarter it arose; nonetheless, the Companion’s report entails