Illness is another valid excuse. Muslim relates that the Prophet ﷺ “combined the noon and afternoon prayers, and the sunset and night prayers, when there was neither fear nor rain”; another wording says, “when there was neither fear nor travel.” The only remaining factor, then, is sickness. Many scholars consequently permitted combining on account of illness, among them Mālik, Aḥmad, Isḥāq, and al-Ḥasan. A group of Shāfiʿī jurists also endorsed it, including al-Khaṭṭābī, and al-Nawawī opted for it in his commentary on Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim. Ibn Taymiyyah reports that Imām Aḥmad explicitly allowed combining whenever there is undue hardship or pressing occupation, citing a hadith to that effect.

The permissibility of combining has likewise been established for the woman experiencing non-menstrual bleeding (mustahāḍah), which is a form of illness.

Second benefit:
The distance of travel that entitles a person to combine has been a matter of disagreement. The two Imams, al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad, set it at two full days’ journey—sixteen farsakhs ⦗1⦘.

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn Ibn Taymiyyah maintained that any journey commonly called “travel,” whether long or short, allows combining and is not bound by a fixed span. He said: “The texts of the Qur’an and Sunnah make no distinction between long and short journeys; whoever distinguishes between them has introduced a division for which there is no basis.” This was also the position of the Ẓāhirī school, and the author of al-Mughnī championed it.

Ibn al-Qayyim remarks in al-Hādī: “As for the reports attributing to him a definition of one, two, or three days, not a single one of them is authentically traced back to him whatsoever.”

Third benefit:
According to the majority of scholars, it is better not to combine, except for the two combinations at ʿArafah and Muzdalifah, because of the clear benefit involved there.

Takeaways from the hadith:

1. The permissibility of combining the noon and afternoon prayers, and of combining the sunset and night prayers.
2. In its general wording, the hadith allows both advancing and delaying the two prayers; the evidences for this have been cited above.
   – On the surface, it appears to restrict the concession to cases where the traveller’s pace has become intense. The scholarly disagreement on that point and their proofs have already been mentioned. Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd said: “The hadith indicates combining while one is actually on the move; were it not for other narrations permitting it in different circumstances, the proof would entail its prohibition elsewhere. Thus, the permissibility established in this hadith is conditioned by a circumstance that…"