“what is recommended for him is to perform wudūʾ (minor ablution).” This is a strong effective defect that casts doubt on the ḥadīth’s authenticity and prevents it from being used as evidence—especially since a contradictory report from ʿĀʾishah is sound, as I have already mentioned. Nor does the report have any other independent routes strong enough to shore it up, contrary to what the author claims when he adds:
“On his authority it is also related: ‘I saw the Messenger of Allah ﷺ perform wudūʾ, after which he recited something from the Qur’an and said, “Such is the case for one who is not in a state of janābah; as for the person in janābah, he must not recite—not even a single verse.”’
It was recorded by Aḥmad and Abū Yaʿlā, and this is Abū Yaʿlā’s wording. Al-Haythamī says, ‘Its transmitters are deemed reliable.’”
I reply: this chain suffers from two flaws—weakness and being mawqūf (halted at the Companion).
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As for its weakness: in the chain appears ʿĀmir ibn al-Ṣumṭ Abū al-Ghurayf. No one declared him reliable except Ibn Ḥibbān, whose leniency in accreditation is well known, as I explained in the Introduction. Someone more knowledgeable of narrators than he—Abū Ḥātim al-Rāzī—said about Abū al-Ghurayf: “He is not well-known; critics have spoken against him just as they did against Aṣbagh ibn Nabāṭah.”
Aṣbagh, according to Abū Ḥātim, is “soft” in ḥadīth, and others—among them al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar—consider him discarded. Thus his weakness is established. -
As for being mawqūf: al-Dāraqutnī and others transmitted the report from Abū al-Ghurayf on the authority of ʿAlī as a statement of the Companion, not of the Prophet, as I clarified in Ḍaʿīf Sunan Abī Dāwūd, no. 131.
Hence the narration reverts to a mawqūf report with a weak chain. It cannot serve as corroboration for the earlier marfūʿ (Prophetic) narration. In fact, it is quite possible that the original wording was mawqūf and that ʿAbd Allāh ibn Salamah mistakenly elevated it to Prophetic status after his mental decline—an entirely plausible scenario.
Therefore the argument based on this ḥadīth collapses, and we must return to the default ruling of permissibility. This is the position of Dāwūd al-Ẓāhirī and his followers; Ibn Ḥazm (1/77-80) championed it and cited supporting reports from Ibn ʿAbbās, Saʿīd ibn