The reason for this divergence seems to lie in drawing an analogy between the deceased and the living. Whoever made that analogy deemed it obligatory to clip the nails and shave the pubic hair, because these are Sunnah practices for the living by unanimous agreement.

Likewise, the jurists disagreed over pressing the abdomen before the washing begins. Some considered it prescribed, while others did not. Those who approved it regarded the procedure as a kind of istinjāʾ—removal of impurities—at the outset of purification, something required of the dead just as it is required of the living. Those who disapproved saw it as imposing a duty the Law has not legislated, maintaining that the living and the dead are not alike in this respect.

Chapter Three: Shrouding

The principal textual basis in this chapter is the report that the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—“was shrouded in three white Yemeni garments (sahūliyya) with no shirt and no turban.”

Abū Dāwūd also transmitted from Laylā bint Qāʾif al-Thaqafiyyah that she said: “I was among those who washed Umm Kulthūm, the daughter of the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him. The first thing the Messenger of Allah handed me was the waist-wrapper, then the chemise, then the head-covering, then the mantle, and after that she was wrapped in the final cloth. The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—was sitting at the door, passing us each piece of her shroud one by one.”

Some scholars took the outward sense of these two reports and held: a man is shrouded in three cloths and a woman in five. This was the view of al-Shāfiʿī, Aḥmad, and a number of others.

Abū Ḥanīfah said: the minimum with which a woman may be shrouded is three cloths, the Sunnah being five, and the minimum for a man is two cloths, the Sunnah being three.

Mālik, however, saw no fixed number at all; a single cloth suffices for either sex, though an odd number is recommended.

The root of their disagreement over setting a number lies in how they understood the two reports. Whoever read them as granting general permission did not stipulate any specific count, except that he recommended an odd number because both reports mention an odd total, and he made no distinction between men and women. He regarded any further specification as beyond what the Law requires and thus unnecessary. Conversely, whoever understood the numbers mentioned to be legislated limits held to a fixed count, whether as an obligation or as a recommendation.

In any case, the matter is broad—God willing; the Law sets no hard boundary here, and insisting on one may be an unwarranted burden. Indeed, “Muṣʿab ibn ʿUmayr was shrouded on the Day of Uḥud in a single cloak; when they covered his head with it, …”