times of necessity—namely, when the traveller is pressing on. This interpretation was adopted by Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah and endorsed by Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Hadi. Al-Baji explains: “Mālik discouraged combining lest it be used by someone who can pray without hardship; but he allowed it when the journey becomes strenuous, basing that on the hadith of Ibn ʿUmar.”
Abu Hanifah, for his part, deemed combining lawful only at ʿArafah and Muzdalifah, as a rite of the pilgrimage rather than because of travel itself.
The majority rely on narrations that mention combining in unrestricted terms, without tying it to whether the traveller is encamped or actively on the march. Among them is what the Muwaṭṭaʾ relates from Muʿādh ibn Jabal: during the expedition to Tabuk the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, once delayed the prayer, then came out and performed noon and afternoon together; he went back inside, came out again, and performed sunset and night together. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said, “This report has an authentic chain.” Al-Shāfiʿī in al-Umm, together with Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr and al-Baji, noted that his entering and coming out must have been while he was settled, not hurrying on; this is a decisive rebuttal of those who claim that combining is allowed only when one is pressing forward.
As for the evidence cited by Imām Mālik, Shaykh al-Islam, and Ibn al-Qayyim, it is the hadith of Ibn ʿUmar: whenever he found the pace of travel intense, he would combine maghrib and ʿishāʾ, saying, “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, used to do so whenever the march became pressing.”
The majority, however, point to the clearer import of their own narrations, which deserves to be accepted, for travel itself—whether during a halt or while moving—is a locus of hardship, and the concession to combine was legislated solely to relieve that hardship.
Even so, Ibn al-Qayyim in al-Hadi counts the hadith of Muʿādh and similar reports among his proofs that the concession applies only when the caravan is actively on the move.
Abu Hanifah’s view, meanwhile, is overturned by the explicit, authentic Sunnah texts.
Benefits:
- The author has discussed combining on account of travel; yet other excuses also permit it. One of them is rain: al-Bukhārī records that the Prophet combined maghrib and ʿishāʾ on a rainy night. In that case the combining is confined to those two prayers, not to noon and afternoon. A number of scholars, among them Imām Aḥmad and his colleagues, deemed this permissible.