110 – Ibn ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with them both) reported that the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: “Tayammum is two strikes: one strike for the face and one strike for the hands up to the elbows.” Narrated by al-Dāraquṭnī, and the leading imams judged that it should be halted at Ibn ʿUmar. (1)

Status of the ḥadīth
• The report is weak; the correct view is that it is mawqūf, i.e. it stops with Ibn ʿUmar.
• Regarding its weakness, the compiler states in Fatḥ al-Bārī: “Of the narrations that describe the manner of tayammum, only the ḥadīth of Ibn Jahaym and the ḥadīth of ʿAmmār are sound; everything else is either weak or disputed in its marfūʿ attribution, and the stronger position is that it is not marfūʿ.”
• He adds in at-Talakhīṣ: Abū Zurʿah declared the report “baseless.”
• As for its mawqūf form, the author here says: “The leading scholars authenticated its being halted.” Al-Ḥāfiẓ comments: “In its marfūʿ form it is weak, whereas in its mawqūf form it contains ʿAlī ibn Ẓabyān, whom most critics impugned, and reliable narrators transmitted it only as mawqūf.”
• Al-Dāraquṭnī relates in his Sunan: “Yahyā al-Qaṭṭān, Hushaym and others narrated it mawqūf—and that is the correct version.” Other reports with a similar wording are likewise unsound, being either mawqūf or weak. Hence the decisive narration is the ḥadīth of ʿAmmār, a conclusion affirmed by al-Bukhārī in his Ṣaḥīḥ.
• There is also a report from Jābir; al-Ḥākim judged it authentic and al-Dhahabī concurred, yet al-Dāraquṭnī maintained that the sound form is mawqūf.

Vocabulary
• tayammum: linguistically the verbal noun of tayammama (form tafaʿʿala). Its root is al-amm, with the hamzah pronounced with a fatḥah, meaning “to intend, to direct oneself toward.”