that lie next to the skin.

• “his private part” (farj): in language the word signifies an opening, a fissure, or the gap between two things. Al-Miṣbāḥ says: every space between two objects is called a farjah. With regard to human beings, the term applies to both the front and rear orifices, for each is an opening, though in common usage it is largely restricted to the front. Al-Nihāyah adds: the farj is what lies between a person’s legs; hence the private area of both woman and man is so named because it is situated between the legs.

• ḥafana (he scooped): a past-tense verb; ḥafnah means a palmful of something, and its plurals are ḥafanāt and ḥufan.

• afāḍa (he poured): yafīḍu ifāḍah, meaning he let the water flow over the remainder of his body so that it ran over him.

• sāʾir jasadihi (the rest of his body): that is, what remained of his body. Al-Azharī notes that the linguists unanimously agree that sāʾir of a thing means “its remainder,” whether small or great. Al-Ṣaghānī observes: sāʾir al-nās means “the remainder of the people,” not “all of them,” as some with limited command of the language imagined when they took it to mean “everyone” in common speech; nor may it be derived from sūr (city wall), for the two roots differ.

• afrāgha (he emptied): one says afrāgha al-ināʾ ifrāghan or farraghahu tafrīghan when he overturns a vessel and empties it of what it contains; here it means that he poured water from the container onto his hands.

• “he struck the ground with it”: that is, he rubbed his hand on the earth to remove whatever stickiness of impurity or semen might remain on it.

• mindīl (towel): a square piece of cloth—cotton, silk, or the like—used to wipe away droplets of water and similar moisture; plural manādīl.

• farraddahā (“but he declined it”): this narration supports the reading found in some versions of al-Bukhārī (266): “I handed him a cloth, but he did not take it,” with the verb read without a shadda. Some ḥadīth specialists vocalized it with tashdīd, yet the lighter form is sounder; hence Ibn al-Sakan counted the version with the doubled consonant as a mistake.