8 – Wiping is not permitted over anything that fails to cover the area that is obligatory to wash, this prohibition being inferred from what the jurists mean when they speak of a khuff.

9 – It is, however, permissible to wipe over socks and the like—footwear that carries the same legal status as the khuff, fully covers the required area, is worn out of need, and is difficult to remove—regardless of the material from which the sock is made: wool, hair, cotton, or anything else.

10 – Al-Mughni states: “It is not permissible to wipe over a thin khuff that reveals the skin, for it does not conceal the area that must be washed; it therefore resembles a sandal.”

Al-Nawawi writes in al-Majmūʿ: “Our scholars have transmitted from ʿUmar and ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with them both) the permissibility of wiping over socks even when they are thin. The same view is related from Abu Yusuf, Muhammad, Isḥāq, and Dāwūd.”

Disagreement among the jurists:

Imam Aḥmad maintained that wiping over socks is permissible; socks are footwear shaped like a khuff but made of something other than leather.

Ibn al-Mundhir said: “Permission to wipe over socks is reported from nine Companions: ʿAlī, ʿAmmār, Ibn Masʿūd, Anas, Ibn ʿUmar, al-Barāʾ, Bilāl, Ibn Abī Awfā, and Sahl ibn Saʿd.”

This is also the position of ʿAṭāʾ, al-Ḥasan, Ibn al-Musayyib, Ibn al-Mubārak, al-Thawrī, Isḥāq, Abu Yusuf, and Muhammad ibn al-Ḥasan. Their evidence is the ḥadith recorded by Imam Aḥmad (1774), Abu Dawud (159), and al-Tirmidhī (99) from al-Mughīrah ibn Shuʿbah, stating that the Prophet ﷺ wiped over his socks and sandals.

Al-Tirmidhī said: “It is ḥasan ṣaḥīḥ (sound and authentic).”

Al-Albānī remarked: “All of its transmitters are trustworthy; they are the very narrators upon whom al-Bukhārī relied in his Ṣaḥīḥ.”