and presented before Allah, so the Prophet ﷺ preferred that his own deeds be presented on that day. He ﷺ also liked to set out at the very beginning of the morning, for that allows one to meet the day head-on. A traveller may suddenly find his journey longer than expected while having made only slight preparations, and then have difficulty extricating himself. This applied to the journeys of the Prophet’s time, which were undertaken on mounts and on foot. Today, as you can see, people encounter little hardship whether they leave early or late, and modern travel is tied to airplanes and fixed timetables. In any event, if a person can depart at the start of the day and on a Thursday, that is better; if he cannot, there is no harm—praise be to Allah.

The author then cited the hadith of Sakhr (d. 8 AH) in which the Prophet ﷺ said, “O Allah, bless my nation in its early mornings,” meaning in the first part of the day. The Prophet ﷺ prayed that Allah place blessing for his community in that part of the day because it marks the beginning of one’s work. As Allah, the Exalted, has said: “And We made the day for livelihood” [78:11]. When a person greets the day from its very start, there is blessing in that. This is something observable: when someone works in the early morning, he finds blessing in his labor. Unfortunately, most of us today sleep through the first part of the day and do not rise until mid-morning, missing the early hours in which the blessing lies. The common saying goes, “The commander of the day is its beginning,” meaning that the first portion of the day is