from ‘Abd Allāh ibn Maslamah, namely al-Qa‘nabī, that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“The month is twenty-nine nights, so do not begin fasting until you see it. If it is obscured from you, complete the count as thirty.”

This wording appears in abridged form in al-Bukhārī, who narrated it from al-Qa‘nabī, from Mālik. It is incomplete, for the wording in al-Muwatta’ is “days.” Al-Qa‘nabī’s wording is that the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said:

“The month is twenty-nine days, so do not begin fasting until you see the crescent, and do not end your fasting until you see it. If it is obscured from you, make your reckoning.”

Thus, he included the words “and do not end your fasting until you see it,” and used the wording “make your reckoning,” not “complete the count.” Likewise, in all the other transmissions of al-Muwatta’, the two clauses precede it, and the wording is “reckoning.” Indeed, Abū ‘Umar ibn ‘Abd al-Barr said: “There is no disagreement in the transmissions from Nāfi‘ of this hadith regarding the words ‘make your reckoning.’” He added: “Sālim likewise narrated it from Ibn ‘Umar.”

He also related the hadith transmitted by Mālik and others from ‘Abd Allāh ibn Dīnār, from Ibn ‘Umar, and said: “Al-Darāwardī narrated it from ‘Abd Allāh ibn Dīnār with the wording: ‘If it is obscured from you, count the days.’”

This, then—and Allah knows best—is an omission and a narration by meaning in Mālik’s hadith as recorded in al-Bukhārī, just as Abū Bakr al-Ismā‘īlī and others mentioned that something similar occurred in this chapter in the wording of Abū Hurayrah’s hadith. A similar wording, suggesting exclusivity, occurs in what we have also narrated through the previously mentioned chain of transmission to