Among the acts for which ablution is recommended:
- ʿAlī—may Allah honor his countenance—said: “The Messenger of Allah ﷺ would come out of the lavatory, recite the Qur’an to us, and eat meat with us; nothing kept him from the Qur’an except major ritual impurity.” Related by the Five and deemed authentic by al-Tirmidhī and Ibn al-Sakan.
I say: Al-Tirmidhī is known among the scholars for his leniency in declaring ḥadīths authentic; al-Dhahabī even said, in the biography of Kathīr ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAmr ibn ʿAwf in al-Mīzān, “For this reason the scholars do not rely on his authentications.” The same applies to Ibn al-Sakan: his grading is not something on which one can safely depend. Therefore, whenever either of these two— or anyone of similar leniency such as Ibn Khuzayma or Ibn Ḥibbān—judges a ḥadīth sound, it is necessary to scrutinize its chain so that a Muslim may be clear about the authenticity of a report from his Prophet ﷺ.
We have, in fact, found leading imams who graded this ḥadīth weak, and they are both more proficient in this science and more numerous than al-Tirmidhī and Ibn al-Sakan. Al-Nawawī said, “Al-Tirmidhī has been opposed by the majority, who have declared this ḥadīth weak.”
Al-Munḏirī, in Mukhtaṣar al-Sunan 1/156, stated: “Abū Bakr al-Bazzār said that this ḥadīth is reported from ʿAlī only through the narration of ʿAmr ibn Murra from ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salama.” Al-Bukhārī quoted ʿAmr ibn Murra as saying: “ʿAbd Allāh—meaning Ibn