and Ibn al-Mubārak, and Isḥāq, and it is also one of the narrations reported from Imam Aḥmad.

A group of Aḥmad’s followers preferred this narration, among them al-Muwaffaq, the Commentator, Taqī al-Dīn, the author of al-Fāʾiq; and among our contemporary scholars: Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm, Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Saʿdī, and Shaykh ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Bāz. Their evidence is the previously cited hadiths in this chapter and others besides them.

In total, fifteen hadiths have been transmitted on the purification of hides through tanning, including the reports of this section.

Those who deem the hide pure answer the hadith of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUkaim by saying that it is inconsistent in both chain and text and that it is mursal, for ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUkaim did not hear it directly from the Prophet. A hadith of this type is too weak to abrogate other texts, since the traditions affirming purification by tanning are more authentic—some of them being agreed upon by al-Bukhārī and Muslim.

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn adds that the hadith of ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUkaim contains no prohibition of using a tanned hide; the ban on benefiting from sinew and raw hide may apply only before tanning, as later texts affirm, whereas no prohibition at all exists after tanning.

Benefit:
The general wording of Ibn ʿAbbās’s hadith (16) indicates that any hide becomes pure once it is cleansed by tanning—even if it comes from an animal whose meat is unlawful to eat, such as the wolf. This is the position of Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, and others, though the stronger view is the opposite.