“…so strike for them a dry path through the sea” (Tā Hā 20:77); in the Hijazi dialect the word ṭarīq is treated as feminine.

• qāriʿah: what is meant is a broad roadway; it was so named because people’s feet continually pound it.
• naqʿ māʾ: pronounced with a fatḥah on the nūn and a sukūn on the qāf, with a plain ʿayn; it denotes pooled or collected water.
• ḍiffat al-nahr: ḍiffah may be pronounced with either fatḥah or kasrah on the ḍād. It is the bank or shore of a river, sea, or valley; every course of water has two such banks. Its plural is ḍifāf.
• laʿn: expulsion and banishment from good and from the mercy of Allah, Exalted is He.

Lessons drawn from the ḥadith
1 – It is forbidden to urinate or defecate on the pathways people use, in the shade where they sit and seek shelter, at the watering places from which they drink or with which they water their livestock and beasts of burden, on the banks of rivers and seas where they take leisure, or beneath fruit-bearing trees whose produce they pick and eat—acts that soil the fallen fruit, render impure those who come to harvest it, and allow the impurity to mix with the soil, from which the roots absorb it and by which the fruit is nourished.
2 – All these facilities are vital and beneficial to people; therefore it is impermissible to soil or befoul them or to cause harm to their users.
3 – By analogy, everything that resembles these places and is needed by the public is likewise protected: clubs and courtyards, gardens and public squares, and any other venues frequented by the populace where they gather and from which they benefit.
4 – Food and drink must be respected; it is unlawful to dishonor them with filth, or to pollute the roots of trees with impurity, for the impurity decomposes, is absorbed by the roots, reaches the branches and fruit, and they are then nourished by it. Even if the impurity undergoes transformation, it remains repulsive and detested.
5 – Defecating or urinating in such places brings people’s curse upon the offender, and that curse may well befall him in reality, for he is the one who caused it—just as al-Ṭabarānī narrated