—Salūq, a city in Yemen to which the salūqī hounds are attributed, and the two types of dog are alike in temperament.

Points derived from the hadith
1 – Al-Bukhari (172) and Muslim (279) record on the authority of Abu Hurayrah that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “If a dog drinks from the vessel of any one of you, let him wash it seven times, one of them with earth.” This shows that a dog’s impurity is a grave impurity because of its extreme filth.

2 – The present hadith indicates that keeping and adopting a dog is forbidden. Muslim (2113) transmits from Abu Hurayrah that the Prophet ﷺ said, “The angels do not accompany a company in which there is a dog or a bell.”

3 – The hadith also proves that the reward of a person who keeps a dog decreases by one qirāt each day—a very great amount that the Prophet ﷺ illustrated in other narrations as being like the immense Mount Uhud.

4 – Modern microscopes have revealed that a dog’s saliva contains deadly, infectious microbes; hence its impurity is classified as severe. Nothing it contaminates is purified except by washing it seven times, one of those with earth, which possesses a powerful cleansing and purifying effect.

5 – Professor ʿAfīf Ṭabbārah remarked: Among the wise rulings of Islam is protecting human bodies from the impurity of dogs. This constitutes a scientific miracle of Islam, anticipated long before modern medicine proved that dogs transmit many diseases to human beings. The German physician Cosmos said: “The growing passion people have in this age for keeping dogs obliges us to draw attention to the dangers that ensue—especially when ownership leads to fondling and kissing them, allowing them to touch their owners’ hands, and letting them lick food remnants from their dishes.”