when he leaves the town to deliver a message or fetch something he needs, then turns straight back without stopping to stay. Such a person is not called a traveller, unlike someone who takes a traveller’s provisions and spends the night there, for he is called a traveller. Someone else may cover that same distance and be a traveller, needing to take provisions for it and spend the night in that village, returning only after a day or two. People call this person a traveller, whereas they do not call the one who went straight there and immediately retraced his steps a traveller, although the distance is the same.

Travel, then, is a particular form of going from place to place; it is not defined by distance or duration. The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) would go to Qubā’ every Saturday, sometimes riding and sometimes walking, without being a traveller. People would come to Friday prayer from al-‘Awālī and al-‘Aqīq, then be back with their families by nightfall, without being travellers. When the people of Mecca went out to Minā and ‘Arafah, however, they were travellers: they took provisions, spent the night outside the town, and made the preparations appropriate to travel. This differs from someone who goes out for Friday prayer or some other need and returns that same day: even if he covers a barīd, he may not be called a traveller.

People have always gone out from their homes to the orchards surrounding their town, each tending his orchard by planting, watering and doing other work, just as the Ansār used to work in their orchards. They are not called travellers, even if one of them stays all day, or spends the night in his orchard and remains there for several days, and even if the orchard is more than a barīd away. For they regard the orchard as part of the town’s outlying dependencies, and going out