combine prayers during his pilgrimage except at Arafah and Muzdalifah. He did not combine them at Minā or on his outward or return journey, although he had previously combined them during the expedition to Tabūk. The correct view is that he did not combine prayers at Arafah merely because of travel, as he shortened them because of travel. Rather, he combined them because maintaining an uninterrupted standing at Arafah kept him from stopping to pray, and because he was occupied with travelling to Muzdalifah.

Thus, he combined prayers at Arafah for the sake of worship, and at Muzdalifah because he was pressing on with his journey there. He would do likewise on his travels: when pressing on with his journey, he would delay the earlier prayer until the time of the later one, then stop and pray them together, as he did at Muzdalifah.

Nothing in his law is an exception to legal analogy. Rather, combining prayers as he did there is also prescribed in comparable circumstances, as the majority maintain. Abū Hanīfah, however, holds that this is an exception to legal analogy. Yet it is known that an exception to an effective cause, unless due to a missing condition or the presence of an impediment, demonstrates that cause’s invalidity. There is neither inconsistency nor contradiction in what comes from Allah. Rather, like cases receive like rulings, and when a ruling is established on the basis of an effective cause, it also applies wherever an equivalent cause is present.

As for “shortening prayers,” there is no doubt that it is specific to travel and has no connection with the pilgrimage rites. The only justification for the people of Mecca shortening prayers at Arafah and elsewhere is that they were travelling. Arafah is one barīd from the Sacred Mosque, as stated by those who measured the distance and by al-Azraqī in “Akhbār Makkah” (Accounts of Mecca). Thus, this was shortening prayers on a journey of one barīd. When they returned to Minā, they were on the return leg of their journey, and the furthest they had intended to travel was only