Q.1. Is staying in Mina a duty or a Sunnah? If one does not stay during pilgrimage in Mina, should he sacrifice a sheep in compensation? Is a sheep due for each night, or one for the whole period?
Q.2. If a resident of Makkah travels to Jeddah to visit some relatives, should he shorten his prayer as a traveler?
M. Asghar
A.1. Staying in Mina is a duty according to some schools of Fiqh, but others like the Hanafi school consider it a Sunnah, or recommended. The Hanbali school has two views on this point, one of them considers it a Sunnah and the other a duty. Some leading scholars like Ibn Hazm say that if a person does not stay in Mina for at least two nights, he has done badly, but nothing is required from him in compensation. Imam Ahmad recommends such a pilgrim to offer some charity to poor people. Those who are strict in their view that it is a duty require slaughtering one sheep in compensation for failing to stay in Mina. The whole period requires one sheep only.
Having said that, I should add that it is important to realize that staying in Mina is a separate duty from that of stoning, which is also done in Mina. Failing to do the stoning, or any part of it, requires compensation by slaughtering a sheep.
A.2. Scholars differ as to what constitutes travel that permits shortening 4-rak’ah prayers to two. Many measure it by distance, saying that the travel should be at least 85 km in distance. This means that Jeddah is just inside the area that does not permit shortening prayers. The other view considers what people deem to be travel without looking at actual distance. Thus if you go from one town to another and, prior to the introduction of the modern means of transport, people used to consider such a trip to be travel then it is so. In this case, travel between Makkah and Jeddah entitles a person to avail himself of all the concessions God has given to travelers. Thus, he prays the shorter version. If he finds himself with a group of residents and they want to offer congregational prayer, he joins them, but he will then offer his prayer in full.
