Differences among the jurists:

The jurists differed over the reason for combining Maghrib and ʿIshāʾ in Muzdalifah.

One view — held by the Shāfiʿīs and the Hanbalīs — is that the concession is because of travel. Accordingly, those for whom combining the prayers is not normally permitted, such as the residents of Mecca, may not combine them.

The Hanafīs and the Mālikīs, however, maintain that the concession stems from the very rite (nusuk) itself, and therefore recommend combining for everyone, whether the person is travelling for his pilgrimage or not.

The preferable course is to follow the Sunnah: every pilgrim should combine the two prayers, whatever the underlying reason may be.

We have already noted that, in the soundest opinion, travel is defined neither by a set duration nor by a fixed distance; rather, any journey for which one must take provisions and a water-skin counts as travel. There is no doubt that the pilgrim — whether he comes from afar or is a Meccan — endures in his pilgrimage the same hardships borne by any traveller.

The scholars also disagreed about the adhan and the iqama for these two prayers.

• Some, among them Sufyān, said that both prayers are to be performed with a single iqama.
• Others, among them Mālik, said that they are to be performed with two adhans and two iqamas.
• Still others, among them Isḥāq, said that they are to be performed with two iqamas only.

The correct position is that adopted by Imams al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad and others: one adhan and two iqamas.

Their proof is the report of Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh ⦗may Allah be pleased with him⦘ in his lengthy narration describing the Prophet’s ﷺ pilgrimage from beginning to end, in which he closely observed the Prophet’s states, words and deeds, preserving from that pilgrimage what no one else preserved.

The reason for the jurists’ disagreement over the adhan and iqama is the multiplicity of narrations.

It is authentically reported from Ibn ʿAbbās that “the Prophet ﷺ prayed the two prayers at Muzdalifah with a single iqama.”

Three narrations come from Ibn ʿUmar. The first — and it is the hadith cited in the present chapter — states that he merely combined the two prayers. The second says that he combined them with a single iqama, and the third says that he prayed them without adhan or iqama at all.

All of these chains are sound: some appear in the two Ṣaḥīḥs, others in the Sunan collections.

Because the incident is one and the same, it is impossible to assign each narration to a different circumstance, and neither abrogation nor reconciliation is workable. The best course, therefore, is to follow the narration of Jābir, who reported the Prophet’s ﷺ pilgrimage without any inconsistency, and to regard the remaining reports as textually irregular and thus set them aside. This is the view of Ibn al-Qayyim, may Allah have mercy on him.