109 – ʿAmmār ibn Yāsir (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: “The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) sent me on an errand. I entered a state of major ritual impurity and could not find any water, so I rolled over the soil just as an animal rolls. Then I came to the Prophet (peace be upon him) and told him what had happened. He said, ‘It would have been enough for you to do this with your hands,’ whereupon he struck the earth with his hands once, then wiped the left over the right, and the backs of his hands and his face.” Agreed upon, and this wording is that of Muslim.

In another narration collected by al-Bukhārī: “He struck the ground with his palms, blew into them, and then wiped with them his face and hands.” ⦗1⦘

Vocabulary of the ḥadith

• ajnabtu (“I became junub”): I entered a state of major ritual impurity.

• tamarraġtu: spelled with an open tāʾ and mīm, a doubled rāʾ, followed by a dotted ghayn. It means “I rolled about on the ground,” imitating the way an animal rolls, because he assumed that tayammum (dry ablution) for janābah should resemble a full ritual bath.

• aṣ-ṣaʿīd: the surface layer of the earth; plural suʿdān and suʿud.

• dābbah: anything that moves upon the earth, as in the verse, “There is no creature on earth but that its provision is with Allah” (Hūd 11:6). By convention the term is often used for riding animals. It applies to both masculine and feminine, and its plural is dawābb.

• “that you say with your hands like this”: here the verb “say” is employed in the sense of “do.” Al-Qāmūs states: