Benefits of the Hadith: (I went out with Sharahbil ibn al-Samit to a village at the distance of seventeen or eighteen miles...) and all its narrations.
Machine translationRead the Arabic original
The Shaykh : Regarding what preceded in "I went out with Sharahbil from al-Samit to a village to the end of it", if it is seventeen or eighteen miles, how many farsakh is that?
The student: Six.
The Shaykh : Yes?
The student: Six.
The Shaykh : Eighteen miles is six farsakh. The jurists say that one does not shorten the prayer unless it reaches sixteen farsakh, but the stronger opinion is that one shortens it even less than that, as long as he has left his town as a traveler traveling across the land, he shortens the prayer. Because anything that comes without being specified in the Shari'ah, to what is it referred?
The student: Custom.
The Shaykh : To custom. Allah and His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) did not specify the distance that permits shortening the prayer, so we allow what Allah has allowed and we do not add conditions to what Allah and His Messenger have allowed. Because if we added conditions, we would restrict what Allah has made broad, since the unrestricted is broader than the restricted, and conditions are a restriction on the conditioned. And on this basis, the most correct is the generality. But if we were to suppose that we are in doubt whether people call it travel or not, it might be said that we return to what the majority of scholars restricted it to, which is two rak'ahs, or we return to what the hadith of Anas indicates, which is that if one exceeds three farsakh, he prays two rak'ahs. And this is closer, because following the Sunnah is closer than following the majority of scholars, since there is no error in the Sunnah, whereas the opinion of the majority may be an error.
The student: Six.
The Shaykh : Yes?
The student: Six.
The Shaykh : Eighteen miles is six farsakh. The jurists say that one does not shorten the prayer unless it reaches sixteen farsakh, but the stronger opinion is that one shortens it even less than that, as long as he has left his town as a traveler traveling across the land, he shortens the prayer. Because anything that comes without being specified in the Shari'ah, to what is it referred?
The student: Custom.
The Shaykh : To custom. Allah and His Messenger (peace and blessings be upon him and his family) did not specify the distance that permits shortening the prayer, so we allow what Allah has allowed and we do not add conditions to what Allah and His Messenger have allowed. Because if we added conditions, we would restrict what Allah has made broad, since the unrestricted is broader than the restricted, and conditions are a restriction on the conditioned. And on this basis, the most correct is the generality. But if we were to suppose that we are in doubt whether people call it travel or not, it might be said that we return to what the majority of scholars restricted it to, which is two rak'ahs, or we return to what the hadith of Anas indicates, which is that if one exceeds three farsakh, he prays two rak'ahs. And this is closer, because following the Sunnah is closer than following the majority of scholars, since there is no error in the Sunnah, whereas the opinion of the majority may be an error.