but if you have not consummated relations with them, no blame falls on you.”
The second restriction is His statement, “who are in your care.” This is nothing more than a prevailing qualification (qayd aghlabī), and such a qualification carries no legal implication; hence no converse ruling is derived from it in the noble verse. A parallel qualification occurs in the hadith under discussion in the words, “his hand spent the night.” Because it, too, is a prevailing qualification, it neither particularizes the ruling nor yields an implied converse. Consequently, night-sleep is not a condition for washing the hands three times after waking from sleep.
By contrast, the well-known view in the school of Imam Aḥmad is that sleep during the day has no effect; the obligation to wash is confined to sleep at night, relying on the Prophet’s wording, “for none of you knows where his hand spent the night.”
Scholars have differed over the wisdom behind washing the hands three times after rising from sleep:
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Some say the reason has been veiled from us; we do not know it, though we hold with certainty that all of Allah’s rulings are based on benefit. The Prophet’s words, “he does not know where his hand spent the night,” point to this hidden rationale.
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Others believe there is a perceptible cause: while asleep a person’s hand roams over his body without awareness and may touch parts that have not been cleansed with water, so impurity could adhere to it.
Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah (d. 728 AH) held that the legislation to wash the hands is due to Satan’s touching them, and he cited the explanatory phrase, “for none of you knows where his hand spent the night.” A similar explanation appears in the preceding hadith: “Indeed, Satan spends the night on a person’s nostrils” (Bukhari 3295; Muslim 238).
This is a sound and satisfactory rationale, and it is likely that the compiler juxtaposed the two hadiths here only to hint at the closeness of their meanings. Allah knows best.
The scholars also disagreed as to whether this command is based on an intelligible reason or is purely devotional. The stronger of the two opinions is that it is intelligible, as indicated by the Prophet’s statement, “for he does not know where his hand spent the night.” Those who regard it as purely devotional include some Mālikīs and Ḥanbalīs.