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Winter Is the Believer's Springtime: Checking a Saying Everyone Repeats
Two lines about winter circulate every year as sayings of the Prophet: that winter is the believer's springtime, and that fasting it is the cold spoils. A look inside the actual books that carry them finds one graded weak, one graded two different ways by two different scholars, and a third, related saying about the night prayer that fails on both of its routes.
Ramadan7 min read5 sources
Author:The Quran Gallery team
Every year, right on schedule, the same lines start circulating as the nights lengthen: winter is the believer’s springtime, people say — the day too short to make fasting hard, the night long enough to fill with prayer. Fasting in winter, goes the companion line, is the cold spoils: a reward taken without the exertion a summer fast demands. Both get repeated as sayings of the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, attributed by name in sermon after sermon as the weather turns. Almost nobody repeating them checks what the books that actually carry these reports say about their own chains. It turns out the books are not shy about it.
A Springtime With a Damaged Root
The fuller version of the springtime saying is recorded by al-Bayhaqi, reaching him through a chain that runs back to Abu Sa’id al-Khudri:
قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: الشِّتاءُ رَبيعُ المُؤمِنِ؛ قَصُرَ نَهارُه فصامَ، وطالَ لَيلُه فقامَ “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘Winter is the believer’s springtime — its day has grown short, so he fasts it, and its night has grown long, so he stands it in prayer.‘”
— al-Sunan al-Kubra, printed page 9/113 of . The edition’s footnote does not let the wording stand on its own charm. It records al-Dhahabi’s verdict on the chain directly: da’if — weak.
That is not a small caveat tucked away for specialists. It is the entire difference between a sentence the Prophet said and a sentence that merely sounds like something he would have said, repeated so often across so many winters that the difference stops being audible.
Two Voices Behind “the Cold Spoils”
The same printed page carries the companion line about fasting, and it turns out to be more interesting than its usual retelling admits — the book records it in two different voices before the paragraph is even finished. The first voice puts the words directly in the Prophet’s mouth, through a narrator named ‘Amir ibn Mas’ud:
… رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: الصَّومُ في الشِّتاءِ الغَنيمَةُ البارِدَةُ “…the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him: ‘Fasting in winter is the cold spoils.‘”
“Cold spoils” is an odd phrase in English, but the Arabic idiom is plain enough once explained: ghanimah is what an army carries home after a battle, and “cold” here means won without a fight — a gain taken at no real cost. A short winter fast, on this reading, buys the same reward as a long, punishing summer one.
Bayhaqi’s own verdict follows the report immediately, in his own words rather than a later editor’s: hadha mursal — this is missing a link. ‘Amir ibn Mas’ud never met the Prophet, so whatever he is reporting, he is reporting secondhand at best. A footnote to the same page adds that Abu ‘Isa al-Tirmidhi reached the identical conclusion on his own, and, for balance, that al-Albani later judged the chain sound anyway in his own edition of al-Tirmidhi’s Sunan — two careful scholars disagreeing with each other across the centuries about the same six words, which is itself a reason not to settle the question here.
The second voice, recorded directly after on the same page, needs no such rescue, because it never claimed prophetic authority in the first place:
قَالَ أَبُو هُرَيْرَةَ: أَلَا أَدُلُّكُمْ عَلَى الْغَنِيمَةِ الْبَارِدَةِ؟ قُلْنَا: وَمَا ذَلِكَ يَا أَبَا هُرَيْرَةَ؟ قَالَ: الصَّوْمُ فِي الشِّتَاءِ “Abu Hurayrah said, ‘Shall I not point you to the cold spoils?’ We said, ‘And what is that, Abu Hurayrah?’ He said, ‘Fasting in winter.‘”
— al-Sunan al-Kubra, printed page 9/113 of the same edition. Bayhaqi labels this report mawquf: a stopped narration, Abu Hurayrah’s own observation about his own habit, carried on his own authority rather than pushed upward to the Prophet. It does not need a prophetic attribution to be worth acting on. A senior companion noticing that short winter days made fasting easier to sustain is, on its own terms, entirely reasonable to repeat — provided it is repeated as his words, and not quietly promoted into something it never claimed to be.
A Line About the Night Prayer That Fails Twice
If the previous two sayings leave room for honest disagreement, the third does not. “Hold fast to the night prayer” is attributed to the Prophet through two separate routes in Sunan al-Tirmidhi, and the book’s own editorial apparatus takes each one apart in turn. The first route runs through Bilal:
قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: عَليْكُمْ بِقيامِ اللَّيْلِ، فَإنَّهُ دَأبُ الصَّالِحينَ قَبْلكُمْ، وَإنَّ قِيامَ اللَّيْلِ قُرْبةٌ إلى اللهِ، وَمَنْهاةٌ عن الإِثْمِ، وَتَكْفيرٌ لِلسَّيِّئاتِ، وَمَطْرَدةٌ لِلدَّاءِ عن الْجَسدِ “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘Hold fast to the night prayer, for it is the way of the righteous before you. The night prayer is a means of nearness to Allah, a deterrent from sin, an expiation for misdeeds, and a means of driving illness from the body.‘”
— Sunan al-Tirmidhi, hadith 3862, printed page 6/150 of . The footnote does not stop at “weak.” It names the fault outright: the chain is talif — ruined — because one of its narrators, Muhammad al-Qurashi, is identified as a man who fabricated hadith for a living.
Al-Tirmidhi says as much himself, in his own voice, printed at the top of the very next page: this wording is gharib, he writes, known from Bilal through no route but this one, and it does not hold up because of its chain. He then gives a second route in its place, through Abu Umamah instead of Bilal, carrying nearly the same words:
قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: عَليْكُمْ بِقِيامِ اللَّيْلِ، فإنَّهُ دَأبُ الصَّالِحينَ قَبْلكمْ، وهو قُرْبةٌ إلى رَبَّكُمْ، وَمَكْفَرةٌ لِلسَّيِّئاتِ، وَمَنْهاةٌ لِلإثْمِ “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘Hold fast to the night prayer, for it is the way of the righteous before you, and it is a means of nearness to your Lord, an expiation for misdeeds, and a deterrent from sin.‘”
— Sunan al-Tirmidhi, hadith 3863, printed page 6/151 of . This route fares no better. The footnote grades it da’if as well, and quotes Abu Hatim calling it munkar outright — a rejected report, carried by a single narrator known for poor memory, which the editors suspect traces back to the very same fabricator behind the first route, wearing a different chain.
Two independent routes, one likely fabricator implicated across both, and a widely quoted call to the night prayer that neither route can actually deliver on the Prophet’s own authority. That is worth sitting with before the next reminder that opens with it.
What Doesn’t Need Rescuing
None of this means the night prayer is optional theater, or that fasting through short winter days is a nice idea without support. It means the weight these three sentences are usually asked to carry was never really there — and that the instruction which actually matters does not need borrowed authority, because it was never resting on a hadith to begin with. It opens the Qur’an’s own address to the Prophet directly, before any companion needed to report it secondhand, before any chain could form to be strong or weak in the first place:
يَـٰٓأَيُّهَا ٱلْمُزَّمِّلُ قُمِ ٱلَّيْلَ إِلَّا قَلِيلًا نِّصْفَهُۥٓ أَوِ ٱنقُصْ مِنْهُ قَلِيلًا أَوْ زِدْ عَلَيْهِ وَرَتِّلِ ٱلْقُرْءَانَ تَرْتِيلًا “O you wrapped in your garment! Stand in prayer through the night, except a little — half of it, or subtract a little from that, or add to it — and recite the Qur’an with slow, measured recitation.”
— Surat al-Muzzammil, 73:1–4
Winter’s short days simply make an existing command easier to keep. The season supplies the arithmetic; the verse supplies the instruction. Neither one needed the sentence attributed to Bilal, or the one attributed to ‘Amir ibn Mas’ud, to already be true.
The reminder tied to the season’s cold has its own solid ground too, recorded by both al-Bukhari and Muslim without a trace of the disagreement attached to the other three sayings:
قَالَ رَسُولُ اللهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ: اشْتَكَتِ النَّارُ إِلَى رَبِّهَا، فَقَالَتْ: رَبِّ أَكَلَ بَعْضِي بَعْضًا، فَأَذِنَ لَهَا بِنَفَسَيْنِ نَفَسٍ فِي الشِّتَاءِ وَنَفَسٍ فِي الصَّيْفِ، فَأَشَدُّ مَا تَجِدُونَ فِي الْحَرِّ وَأَشَدُّ مَا تَجِدُونَ مِنَ الزَّمْهَرِيرِ “The Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him, said: ‘The Fire complained to its Lord, saying: My Lord, some of me has consumed the rest of me. So He permitted it two exhalations — one in winter and one in summer. That is the most intense heat you feel, and the most intense cold you feel.‘”
— Sahih al-Bukhari, hadith 3260, printed page 4/120 of .
A cold morning, on this reading, is not decoration for a sermon. It is one of two breaths the Fire itself was permitted, agreed upon by the two most carefully examined books in the entire hadith tradition. Set beside it, “winter is the believer’s springtime” does not need to be forced into the same category to stay worth repeating — it can be handed on the way Abu Hurayrah handed his own line, as a companion’s insight rather than a borrowed prophetic guarantee, and lose nothing that actually mattered in the exchange.
Checking a source is not an attempt to strip a season of its meaning. It is a refusal to keep attributing to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, exactly the sentences the honest books already say he may never have spoken — and a way of noticing that the instruction which actually matters, to spend winter’s long nights in prayer, was never waiting on their permission anyway.
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