19 – Abū Thaʿlabah al-Khushanī (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: “I said, ‘Messenger of Allah, we are in a land inhabited by a people who are People of the Scripture. May we eat from their utensils?’ He replied, ‘Do not eat from them unless you can find nothing else; if that happens, wash them and then eat from them.’ ” Agreed upon. (1)

Lexical Notes
• Thaʿlabah: begins with the letter thāʾ carrying a fatḥah, followed by a silent ʿayn, then a lām with fatḥah, and finally a bāʾ.
• al-Khushanī: starts with a khāʾ with ḍammah, followed by a shīn with fatḥah, and then a nūn; an ascription to Khushayn ibn al-Nimr of the tribe of Quḍāʿah.
• innā: the particle inna, with a kasrah under the hamzah and a doubled nūn; an emphatic particle that renders its subject accusative, here standing for the first-person plural pronoun.
• qawm: a group of people; conventionally used for a company of men because of their undertaking of weighty matters. Its plural is aqwām.
Allah, the Exalted, says: “O you who have believed, let not a people ridicule another people; they may be better than them, nor let women ridicule other women; they may be better than them.”
Zuhayr said:
“I do not know—though I think I soon shall know—
Whether the household of Ḥiṣn are a people or women.”
• ahl kitāb (People of the Scripture): a descriptive phrase modifying qawm; “the Book” refers to the Torah or the Gospel, and its adherents are the Jews or the Christians.

Points Derived from the Hadith
1 – The prohibition of eating from the utensils of the People of the Scripture—namely the Jews and the Christians—because they do not avoid impurities and may place wine or pork in them; thus caution