Re: At the Doors of Safar :)
Islam has no distinction attached to the month of safar....
the only place i can find the mention of this month is in the ahadith of Hajj and in the particular hadith mentioned at the very beginning of this thread....
the arabs wud not perform umrah in the months of Hajj and the Prophet (saw) wanted to prove to them that this is wrong hence he performed each of the 4 umrahs that he did in his lifetime during the months of Hajj....
and that is why he ordered the sahaba to perform umrah when they accompanied him for Hajj, so that they wud break away from the practice of not performing umrah in the months of Hajj....
safar was one of these months when arabs wud not perform Hajj....
the second hadith (the one mentioned above) is from the "book of medicine" in sahih bukhari....
the translation of the arabic text wud be like ".... and there is no safar"....
while some scholars have taken this to mean the month of safar, there r scholars who have said that it was a type of disease caused by some worms in the stomach and hence considering it contagious the arabs wud kill anyone who is infected with this disease....
hence the meaning concurrent with the rest of the text in the hadith wud be of the disease rather than the month of safar....
and another meaning of 'safar' too has been explained by ibn hajar in his explanation of sahih bukhari....