230 – ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) reported: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ forbade the Companions to practise continuous fasting (wisāl) out of mercy for them. They said, ‘Yet you yourself fast continuously.’ He replied, ‘I am not like you; during the night my Lord feeds me and gives me drink.’” Agreed upon.

That is, He endows me with strength as though I had actually eaten and drunk.

[Explanation]
The author—may Allah have mercy on him—cites the words of ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) in the chapter on kindness and compassion toward the Muslims. She said: “The Prophet ﷺ would sometimes abandon a practice that he loved to perform, out of fear that the people would adopt it and it would then be made obligatory for them.”

Her phrase inna kāna employs the particle inna in its lightened form; its original, heavier form is inna. Grammarians state that its subject is omitted—referred to as the “dummy subject”—while the clause kāna liyadaʿ serves as its predicate. Hence the sentence is affirmative, not negative.

The meaning is that the Prophet ﷺ would occasionally leave off a deed he wished to carry out lest the people imitate him, whereupon it might be prescribed for them and become burdensome.

An illustration of this is what he did in Ramadan. One night he prayed during the month, and a number of the Companions learned of it, gathered round him, and prayed with him. On the second night more joined, and on the third the number grew still further. After that he refrained from coming out to the mosque and said, “To proceed: nothing about your gathering has escaped me…”