Mūsā b. ʿUqbah likewise reports that ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz used to combine Maghrib and the later ʿIshāʾ whenever it rained, and that Saʿīd b. al-Musayyab, ʿUrwah b. al-Zubayr, Abū Bakr b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, and the elders of that time would pray with him and voiced no objection. (1)

Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) said: “These reports show that combining the prayers because of rain is an old and continuous practice in Madinah dating back to the era of the Companions and the Successors. Nothing has been transmitted to indicate that any of them disapproved of it, which means their unanimous acceptance of its permissibility is conveyed by mass transmission. This, however, does not imply that the Prophet (Allah bless him and grant him peace) combined only for rain. If he joined the prayers for a reason less demanding than rain, in addition to joining them for rain, then he combined when there was neither fear nor rain—just as, when he combined while travelling and also combined while resident in Madinah, he combined there without fear or travel. Thus Ibn ʿAbbās’s remark that he combined ‘without this or that’ is not a denial of combining for those causes; rather, it affirms that he combined even without them, even though