The third report is the ḥadīth of Ṣafwān ibn ʿAssāl, who said:

“We were travelling, and we were ordered not to remove our leather socks for three days and their nights except on account of major ritual impurity; as for sleep, urine, or defecation, we were merely to wipe.”

I say: The ḥadīth of ʿAlī is authentic; Muslim included it in his Ṣaḥīḥ. As for the report of Ubayy ibn ʿImārah, Abū ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-Barr remarked, “It is not sound; it possesses no reliable chain, and therefore it should not be set in opposition to the ḥadīth of ʿAlī.”

Regarding the ḥadīth of Ṣafwān ibn ʿAssāl, although neither al-Bukhārī nor Muslim related it, a number of ḥadīth scholars—among them al-Tirmidhī and Abū Muḥammad Ibn Ḥazm—have judged it authentic. On its face it opposes, by way of implied meaning (dalīl al-khiṭāb), the ḥadīth of Ubayy just as the report of ʿAlī does.

It is possible, however, to reconcile the narrations by saying that the reports of Ṣafwān and ʿAlī arose in response to questions about a time-limit, whereas the report of Ubayy ibn ʿImārah explicitly negates any such limit. But since the report of Ubayy has not been established, one is obliged to act on the two sound reports of ʿAlī and Ṣafwān—and this is the stronger position—save that the inference drawn from their wording is challenged by analogy, for fixing a time-limit does not in itself invalidate purification; only the recognised nullifiers of wuḍūʾ do so.

Issue Six

The condition for wiping over the khuffs is that both feet be in a state of ritual purity acquired through wuḍūʾ. This is unanimously agreed upon, apart from an isolated dissent transmitted by Ibn al-Qāsim from Mālik and cited by Ibn Lubābah in al-Muntakhab. The majority uphold the condition because it is firmly established in the ḥadīth of al-Mughīrah and others: when he attempted to remove the Prophet’s footwear, the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said,

“Leave them, for I put them on while my feet were pure.”

The dissenting view interprets this purity in its purely linguistic sense.

The jurists of this chapter also disagreed about a person who washes his feet, puts on his khuffs, and then completes the rest of his ablution: may he thereafter wipe over the khuffs?

• Whoever does not consider maintaining the prescribed order (tartīb) obligatory—and who holds that each limb’s purification is valid before the entire ablution is finished—permits wiping.
• Whoever regards tartīb as obligatory, and maintains that a limb’s purification is not valid until the full ablution is complete, does not permit it.

The first view is that of Abū Ḥanīfah; the second is held by al-Shāfiʿī and Mālik—though Mālik’s prohibition is not on account of tartīb as such, but because he believes a limb attains ritual purity only after the whole ablution is finished. The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “while they were both pure,” referring to legal, not merely linguistic, purity.

In one version of the narration from al-Mughīrah it states:

“When you insert your feet into the khuffs while they are pure, then wipe over them.”