Yasir Qadhi | The Definition of ‘Travel’ (safar) According to Islamic Law | Part 2

Part 1 |  Part 2 |  Part 3

Continued from Part 1

1.5 The Distance in Modern Measurements

So what exactly does a ‘day’s journey’ mean? Not surprisingly, there is no easy method of converting classical measurements into modern ones. It appears that many researchers (classical and modern) did not pay due attention to scientifically converting such measurements into modern ones. What follows is my brief attempt to illustrate the hurdles that one faces.

The standard units of measurement for travel during early Islam were the farsakh and the barīd. However, the Prophetic traditions use the term ‘day’s travel’. So the first issue at hand is to convert the Prophetic ‘day’s travel’ into the classical terms of farsakh and barīd. Before we even begin that, let us first define these terms and establish a relationship between them.

A barīd was a distance that a messenger could travel before he needed to stop to allow his animal to rest. If the message was urgent, then at the end of every barīd there would be a fresh animal waitingfor him. Eventually, the term began to be applied to the ‘messenger’ himself and then to the actual ‘message’, hence modern Arabs still call the postal service ‘barīd’.[1]

A farsakh appears to be a Persian measurement that the Arabs adopted (it was also adopted by the British and called a ‘league’). Most early works mention that four farsakhs make up one barīd.[2] So it can be said that each barīd is divided into four smaller units of a farsakh (plural is farāsikh).

1 barīd = 4 farāsikh

So far, so good. Now the real confusion begins.

The first real issue is: How many barīds can be traversed in a 24-hour period? Unfortunately, this is not something that is unanimously agreed upon, and it is this difference of conversion that results in one difference of opinion over the number of days required to consider someone a ‘traveler’.

Collectively, the Ḥanbalīs, Shāfʿīs and Mālikīs all agreed that the distance of ‘travel’ was four barīds. However, they disagreed amongst themselves as to what exactly this meant in terms of ‘days of travel’. Some within these schools said that in any 24-hour period, a maximum of two barīds could be traversed; other scholars within these same schools, however, said that four barīds could be traversed in one 24-hour period. It is because of this conversion difference that these three schools of law had opinions of both one-day and two-days as being the minimal amount of ‘travel’.

One day’s travel = EITHER two barīds OR four barīds [both opinions held]

What is important for us to note is that these three schools were in agreement with the limit as being ‘four barīds’.

Therefore, for the ‘three schools’,

Sharʿī distance of travel = 4 barīds = 16 farāsikh [For the ‘3 schools’]

This is the opinion of the schools of law other than the Ḥanafī school. As for the Ḥanafīs, they also disagreed regarding how many farsakhs can be traversed in a day [and there is significant disagreement amongst their own scholars as well].

In order to simplify matters, the majority opinion within the Ḥanafī school appears to be that five farāsikh can be traveled in a 24-hour period [note that some Ḥanafī scholars said six, some said seven].[3]

Thus, for this school:

Sharʿī distance of travel = 3-day journey = 3 days x 5 farāsikh/day = 15 farāsikh [Ḥanafī school]

Ironically, even though the Ḥanafīs have a larger quantity in terms of travel days, because the actual journey traveled per day is shorter, the net difference was not of great significance.

Therefore, in the end, all four schools of law are relatively close to one another in terms of farāsikh (16 or 15).

The second dilemma that we face is: How exactly does one translate a farsakh into the modern measurements of miles and kilometers? Obviously, depending on one’s estimate of a farsakh, the distance of a day’s journey will vary accordingly.

Here is where we encounter our first serious problem.

We begin by pointing out that many medieval texts define a farsakh as being ‘3 mīls’. Mīl is, of course, how the Arabs pronounce the word ‘mile’. This would be absolutely perfect, until we understand that this mīl is not the equivalent of the modern ‘mile’! It appears that the Arabs got this word (as did the Romance languages) from the Roman mīllia, which they (i.e., the Romans) measured as a thousand paces by foot.  A ‘pace’ was defined to be a full stride of a Roman soldier (in our understanding, that would be two steps, one with each foot). It has been estimated that this ‘Roman mile’ was actually around five-thousand feet (in our current understanding of ‘feet’). It was only centuries later that the English Parliament standardized the exact length of miles and feet, and decreed that 1 mile = 5280 feet (around 1.6 km). [Why and how they came up with number is really beyond the scope of this article – our readers are already confused by now, and those who are interested may look this tidbit up in any encyclopedia].

While the Arabs took the name from the Romans, they did not take the same measurement. It is also claimed that the Roman soldier’s step was considerably larger than the average step of other ethnicities, especially those who had shorter statures.

The Roman mīllia was adopted by many different cultures. Therefore, to distinguish this Arab version of the mile from other adopted versions,  it was called the ‘Hashemite mile’. Other versions of the mile were the Russian, the Danish, the Portuguese, and the German (not to mention the Nautical Mile, which is different from land equivalents).

Our scholars did attempt to define this Hashemite mile (a.k.a. a mīl); however, in the days before scientific measurements and  international treaties that governed such matters, they could not come up with a unified definition. Some classical texts mention that a mīl consists of twelve-thousand steps; others claimed that a mīl was as far as the eye can see; yet others claimed that it was the distance where one could recognize a figure of a human in the distance but could not tell whether it was a male or female.[4]

What is clear from all of this is that not only is a mīl undefined, even if one of these definitions were to be taken, it would not be scientifically precise. The bottom line is that the Arab mīl, a.k.a. ‘Hashemite mile’, had never been scientifically defined. How could it, in an era before the Newtonian scientific revolution that we are all familiar with and upon whose standards we conduct experiments?

In the 16^th century, the British parliament offered a precise definition that has stuck to this day: that 1 mile = 5280 feet (around 1.6 km).  Remember that this conversion factor was a relatively recent one, offered by the British. However, when some of our modern scholars attempted to then translate these ancient distances of farāsikh and barīd into modern units, they appeared to have read in the British conversion units into the ancient terms. Hence, they simply ‘chugged and plugged’ away, using the ancient definition of one farsakh being three medieval Hashemite mīls, and every ‘mile’ (sic.) being 5280 feet. Thus, they moved from an ancient term (farsakh) to a medieval one (mīl) to a British definition of another (mile).

This was not the only attempt to translate the farsakh into a recognizable unit. The famous scholar Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr (d. 463 AH) stated that a farsakh is roughly 10,500 ‘arm-lengths’ (dhirāʾ).[5] Very well, but what does that mean for us in our units of measurement? An average arm-length has been estimated in our times to be around 48 centimeters (i.e., 0.48 meters).[6] It appears that a large group of later scholars accepted Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr’s conversion factor and based modern calculations on it.

Other scholars, such as al-Nawawī, al-Ramlī, and al-Ḥajjāwī all held the position that a farsakh is in fact eighteen-thousand dhirāʾ.[7]

Hence, plugging and chugging away:

- With the conversion factor of one farsakh = 3 mīl = 3 ‘standard’ miles

Four barīds = 16 farsakhs x 3 mīl/farsakh = 48 mīl = 48 miles = 77.25 km

- With the conversion factor of Ibn Ê¿Abd al-Barr:

Four barīds = 16 farsakhs x  10,500 dhirāʾ/farsakh x 0.48 meters/dhirāʾ = 80.64 km (50.4 miles)

- With the conversion factor of al-Nawawī:

Four barīds = 16 farsakhs x 18,000 dhirāʾ/ farsakh x 0.48 meters/dhirāʾ = 138.24 km (86.4 miles)

For reasons that I could not understand, the modern Ḥanafi position typically calculates a distance of 15 farsakhs to be 77 km (or 48 miles).

It can be seen that the conversion factor of al-Nawawī actually yields almost double the distance of the first conversion factor. It can also be seen that all of these conversions are rather tenuous; none of them could have been known or measured with such precision during the time of the first generations of Islam.

Now that we have successfully (?) translated these ancient units into three possible distances (and note that there are even more possibilities if we were to discuss other conversion factors), let us return to the issue of the distance required for one to be considered a ‘traveler’.

1.6 The strongest opinion

Now that we have discussed the actual distance of these measurements, let us return to the original question: which of these opinions appears to be correct?

The strongest opinion – and Allah knows best – appears to be the last one (viz., that a traveler is one who customarily understands his situation to be one of ‘travel’), for a number of reasons:

1) Ibn Taymiyya’s point that the Prophet did not specify any distance is a very poignant one. He neither ordered that the earth be measured, nor did most of the travelers of the time calculate the distance that they traveled. It does not make sense, therefore, that the Shariah would place a numerical value when such unit-definitions were not known or followed by the majority of that generation.

2) Even in the hadiths that the majority use (about a woman traveling without a maḥram), there are discrepancies between ‘one-day’, ‘two-days’ and ‘three-days’ – all three wordings are reported in one or both of the Saḥīḥ works. So which one should be resorted to?

Additionally, all three hadiths use the word ‘travel’; would it not, therefore, be safe to assume that the Prophet was not trying to link the word ‘travel’ to any distance, but rather simply discussing the issue of a woman traveling without a maḥram? Furthermore, the tradition about permitting wiping over the socks has nothing to do with setting a limit for ‘traveling’ – it merely sets a time-limit for allowing someone to wipe over one’s socks.

Therefore, there is nothing in the hadith literature that one can safely use as a defining distance for travel.

3) As can be clearly seen, there is no precise and agreed upon conversion factor for translating a ‘day’s journey’ into a tangible and precise measure. There are a number of ‘grey areas’ in this calculation.  What exactly is a ‘day’s journey’? How many barīds are in such a journey? How many farsakhs can be traveled in a day? How long is a farsakh? What exactly is a mīl? And so forth.

If this is the case, it does not make sense that our Shariah would have obligated us to measure ‘travel’ in units that to this day remain undefined and ambiguous.

4) To place a precise measurement on ‘travel’ seems to contravene the purpose of the law and hence the maqāṣid of the Shariah. The purpose of this ruling is to ease the burden upon the traveler by allowing him to shorten and join the prayer. If a traveler is engrossed in figuring out how far he has traveled (imagine in the days before car odometers gave this information), it is as if the Shariah is placing a bigger burden on him by asking him to calculate a distance that he is, in all likelihood, not capable of doing.

5) This distance really makes very little sense in modern times. A distance of 80 km is more akin to a picnic than to a travel – and according to Ibn Taymiyya’s definition, if one were to go to a park outside of one’s city with the express intention of returning in a short period of time, this would not constitute travel. If we look at the frame of mind of a family who is going on a day-trip to a park outside the city versus going on a journey, there is a significant difference. When one goes on a day-trip, the house is left as is, the neighbors are not told, life ‘at home’ is not assumed to be interrupted, and so forth. On the other hand, when one goes on a ‘travel’, miscellaneous factors must be taken care of before embarking on a ‘journey’. All of this is known to and experienced by the people of our time.

6) Before even beginning to ‘convert’ such ancient units into modern ones, an even more profound dilemma can and should be discussed. For those who follow one of the ‘standard’ opinions, the issue must be raised: is it not too literalistic to measure a ‘day’s- journey’ by the means and methods of eras gone by? In other words, if the primary means of travel of the time were horses and camels, and based on that one extrapolates a day’s journey, would it be permissible (in fact, would it not be more in line with the goals of the Shariah) to measure a modern day’s journey in car-travel time?

Personally, if I were to follow this opinion (meaning, if I were to follow a ‘two-day journey’ opinion), it would make more rational sense to me to measure a ‘day’s journey’ in the standard travel-means of our times, namely: a car. This then raises a further question: Does this mean we can eventually extrapolate to a passenger plane? How about a private jet? Questions abound; answers, on the other hand, are not so easy to bring forth.

All of this lends further credence to the position of Ibn Taymiyya: that a ‘traveler’ is one who is customarily considered one. An average Muslim does not need to resort to a scholar, or to a map, in order to find out if s/he is a traveler or not: you know it by what you do to prepare for a trip and your psychological frame of mind.

To be continued…

In our next and final installment, we will discuss how long one remains a traveler at a non-resident location.