did he do that? He replied, “He wanted not to burden his community.” (1)

Al-Majd Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “By implication this points to the permissibility of combining because of rain, fear, or illness. The outward wording was set aside in order to allow combining for other reasons on account of the consensus and the reports that fix the prayer times; therefore its implied meaning remains in force. In addition, an authentic hadith has proven the legality of combining for the mustahāda (a woman suffering from chronic non-menstrual bleeding), and istihāḍa is a type of illness.” (2)

Al-ʿAllāmah al-Albānī (may Allah have mercy on him) commented on Ibn ʿAbbās’s phrase “when there was neither fear nor rain”: “…This suggests that combining because of rain was already recognized in his ﷺ lifetime; were it not so, there would have been no point in denying rain as a valid reason for combining—reflect on that.” (3)

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) likewise remarked on Ibn ʿAbbās’s wording “without fear or rain,” “nor travel”: “The combination that Ibn ʿAbbās mentioned was for none of these reasons, and on that basis Imām Aḥmad used it as evidence—by way of a fortiori argument—for combining in these very situations, for…"