the soundness of his body, the efficiency of his digestion, and the steadiness of his strength; therefore he should praise Allah.
In Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī (6223) it is recorded: “Allah loves sneezing and detests yawning,” because sneezing indicates lightness and vitality of the body, whereas yawning usually points to heaviness, fullness, and slackness.
Sharḥ al-Adab al-Mufrad comments on the Prophet’s words, “Allah loves sneezing and detests yawning”: love and dislike here pertain to the underlying causes. Sneezing arises from bodily lightness and the opening of the pores, while yawning stems from heaviness and repletion. The first brings energy for worship; the second breeds sloth and lethargy. For that reason the Sacred Law encouraged praising Allah after sneezing—out of gratitude for sound limbs, for the relief gained by expelling harm and heaviness from the head, and for the clearing away of catarrhal matter. All these are divine favors, so praising Allah for them is recommended. Although the wording of the injunction suggests obligation, no scholar has actually deemed it obligatory.
The Prophet ﷺ said: “It is a right upon every Muslim who hears him to say tashmīt.”
Ibn al-Qayyim reports that a number of our scholars view tashmīt (responding “May Allah have mercy on you” to a sneezer) as an individual duty, because the ḥadith employs explicit terms of obligation and speaks of it as a “right.” Others hold it to be a collective duty; this view was preferred by Ibn Rushd and Ibn al-ʿArabī and adopted by Abū Ḥanīfah and the majority of the Ḥanbalīs. Al-Ḥāfiẓ declared this latter opinion stronger in light of the evidence.
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The Sunan of Abū Dāwūd (5029) and al-Tirmidhī (2745) record with a sound chain, on the authority of Abū Hurayrah, that “whenever the Messenger of Allah ﷺ sneezed, he would place his hand or his garment over his mouth.”
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Al-Ādāb al-Sharʿiyyah also states: offering tashmīt to the sneezer and his reply is a collective obligation; this is the apparent view of Mālik and others. Some, however, regard it as merely recommended, and that is the position of al-Shāfiʿī and others.