The Shaykh’s reference to the letter of the Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah regarding shortening the prayer, and the Shaykh’s praise of it, stating that it is great in its field, and the Shaykh’s mention of some of what is contained in it, and the clarification of the truth in the issue and the illustration thereof.

The Shaykh : And the Shaykh al-Islam Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him) addressed this issue in a manner I have not seen from anyone else, in a specific letter on the rulings of travel, which was printed with the collection of letters and issues that Sayyid Rashid Rida (may Allah have mercy on him) published. He gives an example of a man who travels a distance of three hundred kilometers or more, yet he is not considered a traveler. This is to confirm to the reader that travel has no relation to the distance one covers, whether long or short, but rather travel takes its name and ruling based on the situation of the person who has left the built-up area. For example, in the Levant, there is a village east of Damascus called Duma, which is about fifteen kilometers from Damascus. And in the north of the Levant, there is Aleppo, which we call the second capital because it follows Damascus in size and the launch of its trade, and so on. Ibn Taymiyyah says: If a man leaves Damascus to hunt in its outskirts, and when he starts hunting he finds nothing to satisfy him, so he goes beyond the outskirts to a nearby village, until he reaches Duma, and then goes beyond Duma, and so on, until he finds himself in Aleppo. Naturally, in those days, this took him days, and the distance between Damascus and Aleppo is about four hundred kilometers. He says this man is not a traveler, and the reason is that he did not leave his town as a traveler; he left for entertainment by hunting, and then this hunting led him to pursue it. As came in the authentic hadith: So this person was distracted by the hunting a little, then a little more, then a little more, and then he found himself in the middle of Aleppo. He said this is not a traveler because he did not leave, nor did he prepare for travel at all, but the hunting carried him to walk from here to here until he reached Aleppo. So, first of all, what must be observed by the one leaving the town or city he is in is: did he intend to travel or not? This is one issue. Another issue is that people’s intentions may differ, and thus their rulings may differ. Two men leave the same town and cover the same distance, and this distance, combined with the intention to travel, is present in both men, so they settle in the town they intended to reach... One of them stays for two or three days and considers himself a traveler; this is correct. But the other does not consider himself a traveler, but rather considers himself a resident. Why? Because he has two homes: a home in the town he left and a home in the town he intended to reach. So the first man, who does not have a home there, is a traveler as long as he stays in that town. The other man, who has a home, is a resident as long as he stays in that town. So the point of this example is that two people cover the same distance and settle in the same town, yet one takes the ruling of the other. It is also possible to consider two people who left a town, one with the intention of traveling and the other with the intention of hunting, as we mentioned earlier in the example of Ibn Taymiyyah (may Allah have mercy on him), and the distance is the same, but the ruling differs. A man also leaves as a traveler to follow up on his commercial, governmental, or similar affairs in the other town, while another leaves for a stroll, and in his stroll, it never occurred to him that he was a traveler, or that he should prepare for travel, or anything similar.
In summary, it is not befitting for us, when we leave our town, to look at the distance we cover and ask whether it is long or short. In my opinion, this is to first be free from confusion and disagreement, and second, to know the correct ruling, or what is closest to the correct ruling, in this issue. We should not think about how many kilometers we covered today, whether a lot or a little. The second thing is to observe that when we left the town, did we leave intending to travel and preparing for travel, or not? And I was asked recently, meaning yesterday, while we were on the way to the place where we gathered yesterday, what do you call the camp?

The questioner : The boys

The Shaykh : al-Habiyah. So some of us asked: Is this travel or not? I am a stranger to the town, of course, and the people of the house know best what is in it, but I said, by Allah, I do not feel that I am a traveler here with this distance. As for the fact that I left Amman for Syria, I am still a traveler. But if I were a resident here and covered this distance, I would not feel at all that I am traveling; rather, I am on a stroll. I did not take food or drink, nor did I provision myself, nor did I bid farewell to my family, nor anything usually associated with the state of a traveler. I did not feel any of this at all. Nevertheless, I rule with this, and it is not permissible for me, neither by Shari'ah nor by reason, to rule on the people of the house, because the people of the house know best what is in it. But I say, as an example, when I left here and it was said to me that we are going out to the open area, and there was a camp and so on, and we would gather with the brothers, and we got in the car and it carried us, covering the earth as if folding it, I did not feel at all that I was a traveler, ever. But is the matter the same when I came from Qatar to you? Of course, the matter is completely different. Therefore...

The questioner : I say, by the grace of Allah, I came here

The Shaykh : It is by the grace of Allah, true, but by the grace of Allah we also go to America, but...

The questioner : This is real travel

The Shaykh : The issue at hand, in any case, is that if you have an opinion on what we are discussing, we want to hear it. A man is strong through his brother, yes. So I say that the thing that should be observed, and this is truly fundamental, is that you should not look into the length or shortness of the distance, because that reality is not what solves the problem and puts an end to it. Rather, look into your own selves. We gave an example on which there is absolutely no disagreement: two men left a town, one is considered a traveler and the other is not considered a traveler, and the distance is the same. So the distance does not determine who is a traveler and who is not. Rather, the issue of travel is determined by the person's state and his intention. If he truly prepares as a traveler, and this preparation has customary indicators, the first of which is, for example, is the common practice of people when one of them truly travels, and it is known to people that it is travel, is his conduct the same as if he were to leave, for example, from the house to the market, bidding farewell to his family? The answer, of course, is no. But the opposite is the case: when he travels, he bids farewell to his family, he may embrace those with whom it is permissible to embrace, kiss those with whom it is permissible to kiss, and shake hands with those with whom it is not permissible to kiss, and so on. He bids farewell in a way that is not the custom of the resident who does not intend to travel. This is a phenomenon I want to draw attention to: how do we know, after a person intends it, how can we know that he is a traveler or not? One of the ways is how he bids farewell to his family, and the methods may vary. A second point where there is a custom: there is a general custom in many of the countries we live in. For example, we have in Damascus a summer resort called "Madya, al-Zubdani, and Baqin", which is fifty kilometers from Damascus. When one of us leaves Damascus, I do not say, "I am traveling to al-Zubdani or Madya and Baqin," but rather, "I am going there for recreation." But if he goes to Beirut, and the distance is double this distance, one hundred kilometers, he says, "I am traveling to Beirut," "I am traveling to Hama," "I am traveling to Homs," which is closer than Hama, let alone Aleppo. So what relieves us in this issue is to look at what is the custom of people when the people of a town leave their town for another town? I say this with this specification because a person may go out to the desert where there is no specific place he intends to visit. In that case, truly, it becomes... a traveling man because he does not know where he will set up his camp. If there is a general custom, as some of the brothers mentioned yesterday, that from here to al-Wafra, they used to consider this journey as travel in the past, and now they do not consider it travel. I am, of course, just reporting; I was told this. So I said, if this departure from Kuwait to al-Wafra is not considered travel by custom, then it is not travel. Custom has a role in such issues, because what is custom formed from? What is it composed of? It is formed from people's view of their reality. The feeling of those who cover this distance between Kuwait and al-Wafra is what suggests to them whether they are traveling or not. So one of the things a student of knowledge can use to know whether he is a traveler or not is to look at the custom of people. If the custom differs, and this may actually happen, let us return to the criteria, some of which we were able to mention earlier. In any case, in my opinion, since this issue is a matter of disagreement among scholars in the past, I do not think it is good for there to be much and long argument among us. Rather, every person, as Allah the Exalted said, So when you leave a town for that town with me, I may see myself as not a traveler and you see yourself as a traveler, or the opposite, I see myself as a traveler and you do not see yourself as a traveler, the matter is broad, and a person is judged according to what is in his heart. And we ask Allah, Mighty and Majestic, to guide us to the truth in which people differ.

The questioner : May Allah reward you with good.

The Shaykh : And may Allah bless you.

The questioner : We are in agreement.

The Shaykh : how

The questioner : We are in agreement.

The Shaykh : May Allah reward you with good