101 – ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: “The Prophet (blessings and peace be upon him) would teach us the Qur’an as long as he was not in a state of major ritual impurity.” Narrated by Aḥmad and the compilers of the Sunan; this is al-Tirmidhī’s wording, and he classed it ḥasan, while Ibn Ḥibbān declared it ṣaḥīḥ. (1)

Hadith grading:
The hadith is authentic.
Al-Talkhīṣ says: It was transmitted by Aḥmad, the authors of the Sunan, Ibn Mājah, Ibn Ḥibbān, al-Ḥākim (1/253), al-Bazzār, al-Dāraqutnī (1/119), and al-Bayhaqī (1/288), with varying wordings. It was judged sound by al-Tirmidhī, Ibn al-Sakan, ʿAbd al-Ḥaqq, and al-Bughawī.
Ibn Khuzaymah related that Shuʿbah said, “This hadith constitutes one-third of my capital,” and he also said, “I have never narrated a hadith better than it.”

Vocabulary of the hadith:
• kāna (would): Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd explained that the phrase “kāna yafʿalu such-and-such” means the action was repeated and habitual. Kāna may also be used simply to indicate that an action occurred once, without connoting repetition, but the former usage is more common and should be applied to this hadith.
• yuqri’unā al-Qur’an: i.e., he would recite the Qur’an to us and teach it to us by having us repeat after him.
• mā lam yakun junuban: the particle mā here functions as a temporal infinitive, meaning “for as long as.” In other words, for the duration of his remaining in a state of major impurity. The explicit adverb of time has been omitted and replaced by mā, and the resulting verbal noun is treated grammatically as an adverbial of time because it stands in place of the omitted temporal phrase.