Jumu‘a in the Villages of Bengal

Question

Some villages of Bengal — indeed most of them — run on adjoining and continuous, one after another, over a long distance, probably three or four days’ journey, more or less. Taking one or two [villages] together, the population will be three or four thousand, while in the whole of this built-up area and settlement the population is in the hundreds of thousands, indeed countless. In some of them there are also a post office, a market, a police station and a board office.

Answer

The situation of the villages of Bengal is very doubtful, and the state of their ordinary inhabitants, and even of ordinary people of knowledge there, is also most astonishing: when these gentlemen intend to travel, they begin to shorten the prayer (qasr)

Source: Fatawa Mahmudiyya

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