his soothsaying. A kāhin (soothsayer) is someone who claims knowledge of the unseen; the term includes the ʿarrāf (fortune-teller), the astrologer, the pebble-diviner, the palm-reader, and every other impostor and magician.
Ibn al-Athīr said: “The kāhin is the one who reports future unseen events, while the ʿarrāf reports things that are hidden. Some of them claim to have a jinn companion who brings them news; others allege that they discern matters from preliminary signs and causes, deducing them from the words, actions, or condition of the questioner; and some maintain that they apprehend things through a special insight granted to them.”
Lessons derived from the ḥadith:
1 – Allah, Exalted be He, says: “O you who believe, eat of the wholesome things We have provided for you” (al-Baqarah 2:172). Thus the Prophet ﷺ made the wholesome lawful and forbade the foul. Illicit earnings are therefore prohibited, and among the gains he proscribed are those mentioned in this noble ḥadith.
2 – The dog is the most impure and filthy of animals; its impurity can only be cleansed with earth accompanied by seven washings. Accordingly, the Prophet forbade keeping, selling, or acquiring it unless there is a pressing need—such as guarding sheep or crops—or it is kept for hunting, in which case possession is allowed. As for the prohibition of its price, it can be understood in one of two ways:
a) The prohibition concerns its price because that price itself is unlawful. This is the position of those who regard the sale of a dog as invalid and its proceeds as forbidden—the majority of scholars, including the three imams—regardless of whether keeping a dog is permissible.
b) Imām Abū Ḥanīfah, however, deems the sale valid and the price permissible, holding that the prohibition is due only to the dog’s baseness, not to intrinsic unlawfulness. The stronger view is the first.
3 – In the narration of Abū az-Zubayr transmitted by Muslim there is an addition reported by an-Nasāʾī, “except a hunting dog.” Some scholars restricted the general sense of the ḥadith on its basis, whereas the majority considered the addition irregular (shādhdh) and upheld the hadith’s unrestricted wording.