The first was the preceding verse: “There is no blame upon you if you shorten the prayer…” He stated that it was revealed concerning the Prayer of Fear in the Medinan period. The second was hadiths, including his saying, may Allah bless him and grant him peace: “Allah has exempted the traveller from fasting and from half of the prayer.” It was narrated by the compilers of the Sunan and others, and I have documented it in Sahih Abi Dawud (2083) and elsewhere. The third was that he cited five hadiths explicitly stating that the shortening of the prayer took place in Mecca, when Gabriel, peace be upon him, descended to the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, and led him in the five daily prayers.

The response, in the same order, is as follows:

1. As for the verse, he himself acknowledged (p. 20) that it was revealed after the Hijrah, in the fourth or fifth year. He clarified this further, saying (p. 21): “Rather, what occurred was that there was an interval of more than three years between the increase in the resident’s prayer and the shortening of the traveller’s prayer, as has preceded!”

I say: By this explicit statement, he has demolished that heading and the proofs he cited beneath it—this verse being the first of them—for it means that the resident’s prayer was prescribed as two rak‘ahs each, and was then increased in Medina. This accords perfectly with the hadith of ‘A’ishah, especially the hadith under discussion, and with what al-Hafiz considered most likely, as mentioned above. It contradicts his claim that it was prescribed as four rak‘ahs each in Mecca!

2. The hadiths he mentioned, to which I referred, and of which I quoted one for the readers—since the response to it is the response to them all—are, in fact, subject to the very same response as the preceding verse. For the exemption mentioned in the hadith may be understood according to either possibility; that is, whether it was