The Types of Hadiths Reported on Combining Prayers While Residing from the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him).

The Shaykh : And as I said earlier, there are only two categories:
Hadiths that state the Messenger of Allah combined prayers, without specifying the form of this combining, and other hadiths that clarify the reality of this combining. Some are combining by postponement, as mentioned previously regarding Anas, and some are combining by advancing, as in the hadith of Mu'adh ibn Jabal (may Allah be pleased with him), which Imam Malik narrated in his *Muwatta* and Abu Dawud in his *Sunan*: This is combining by advancing; he brought the 'Asr prayer forward to the time of the Zuhr prayer and combined them in the time of the Zuhr prayer. This is a real combining and combining by advancing.
Then he (peace and blessings be upon him) did the same with the Maghrib and 'Isha' prayers, combining them as well, while he was traveling on his return from Tabuk. This is also combining by advancing.
Therefore, the combining established in the Sunnah is either absolute combining or restricted combining, and this has two types: combining by postponement and combining by advancing. So whenever a hadith comes to us stating that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) combined, it is obligatory for us to interpret it according to the known combining established in the minds of the people of knowledge. Since there is only real combining in the two forms mentioned earlier, advancing and postponing, when a hadith comes to us stating that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) combined, without specifying the type of this combining, such as the hadith of Ibn Abbas mentioned earlier, it is obligatory for every jurist to interpret this combining according to the interpretation known in the Sunnah, not according to the interpretation existing in some minds which has no reality in fact, which is formal combining.
And my speech had ended when the adhan was called for the Maghrib prayer, when I narrated this hadith of Ibn Abbas, I said: This hadith explicitly states, through its narrator, the reason why the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) combined while residing in the city, not traveling. Ibn Abbas was asked, as you heard, about the reason for the combining, because the known norm is that combining is only in travel. So what was the matter with the Messenger (peace be upon him) combining while residing in the city? His answer invalidates formal combining with an invalidation that admits no response, where he said: His statement explicitly indicates that the combining was not formal combining, because the reality is that if a person wants to combine the two prayers, Zuhr with 'Asr or Maghrib with 'Isha', and he waits and anticipates the end of the first time, the time of Zuhr, he prays Zuhr, and before he finishes this prayer, the time of 'Asr has entered.
This does not remove hardship; rather, it confirms the hardship. Meanwhile, the purpose of combining, especially in travel, is to make things easy for people, because they often need to add one prayer to another. Since this hadith explicitly states that the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) combined to remove hardship, this reasoning confirms that the combining was a real combining between the two prayers in the time of one of them. There is no basis for interpreting this hadith as some later scholars of precise research did, interpreting it as formal combining. We do not find a basis for this formal combining in any of the hadiths of the Messenger (peace be upon him), even if some narrators suspected it, as mentioned in *Sahih al-Bukhari*: It was said to Abu al-Sha'tha: "I think he postponed the first to the second." He said: "And I think so." This is a suspicion that neither fattens nor satisfies hunger. But when we study the hadith of Ibn Abbas, which Muslim narrated with this precision and observation, we then know that the combining which the Messenger (peace be upon him) intended was to not burden his Ummah with this arrangement and this Shari'ah that he brought from the Lord of the Worlds, to remove hardship from some people, whether they were a group in a mosque or individuals, each in his work or in his home or similar. If he found hardship, then the existence of hardship negates the assumption we know of maintaining the prayer, which was commanded in the saying of the Blessed and Exalted: Just as the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) clarified by his word and deed that this timing indicated by the Lord of the Worlds is five prayers, each prayer to be prayed in its time, he also added a second clarification, permitting combining in travel, whether combining by advancing or postponing. Finally, he clarified to people that it is permissible for the resident to combine the two prayers with a real combining, not as a dispensation. This is the difference between combining in the state of residence and combining in the state of travel. Let no one imagine that it is permissible for the resident to combine according to his whim, his way, or his opinion, whether there is hardship in maintaining the prescribed timing or not. It is not so. Rather, the hadith of Ibn Abbas provides two benefits mentioned earlier: that the combining was real, and the other benefit, which I wanted to conclude the speech I started before the Maghrib prayer by pointing out, because I know from my personal experience that many of those who follow the Sunnah and are zealous for the hadith without being zealous for the imams—and this is obligatory for every Muslim who knows the Sunnah—I know that these people hold that the ruling of combining in the state of residence is like the ruling of combining in the state of travel. The answer is no, because combining in the state of travel is a dispensation where removing hardship is not observed.