the authentic reports that deal with the dog, and because the outward sense of the Qur’an must be followed in affirming the intrinsic impurity of the pig and the idolater rather than resorting to analogy—just as the outward sense of the ḥadīth must be followed. On this basis most of the jurists—meaning those who deem the dog’s suʾr impure—have taken their stand.

The command to pour away whatever a dog has lapped is, in the language of the Law, both suggestive and appropriate as an indication that the water it has lapped is impure; for what is customarily understood in the Sharīʿah from an order to discard something and wash the vessel that contained it is that the thing itself is impure. Their objection—that had the matter been one of impurity no specific number of washings would have been stipulated—carries no weight; it is perfectly conceivable for the Law to single out one impurity rather than another with a distinctive ruling in order to make its prohibition more emphatic.

The Qāḍī said:

My grandfather—may Allah have mercy on him—states in his book al-Muqaddimāt that this ḥadīth is causal and rationally intelligible; it is not motivated by impurity. Rather, it stems from the possibility that the dog which drank from the vessel was rabid, and hence there is fear of poison.

He added: For that reason the number seven was specified for washing, for this number is employed in the Law in many situations involving treatment and cure of diseases. What he said—may Allah have mercy on him—is a sound interpretation according to the Mālikīs; for if we say the water itself is not impure, it is better to supply a rationale for washing it than to declare the ruling unreasoned while the water is pure in itself.

I have been told that some people objected to him, saying, “A rabid dog does not approach water when its rabies is at its height.” What they say concerns the time when the illness is fully established in the dog, not its initial stages, so their objection is pointless. Moreover, the ḥadīth makes no mention of the water; it mentions only the vessel. Perhaps the dog’s suʾr, before the rabies becomes firmly rooted, possesses some harmful property. There is nothing strange about such matters appearing in the Law; this is analogous to the report about the fly: when it falls into food it should be submerged,

the explanation being that in one wing is disease and in the other is the cure. As for what has been said within the school—that the dog in question is the dog one is forbidden to keep, or the urban dog—this is weak and far removed from the foregoing rationale, unless someone were to say that the prohibition is merely intended as a deterrent to keeping it.

Issue Five
The scholars have disagreed over the suʾr of a ritually pure person, forming five opinions. One group held that such suʾr is absolutely pure; this is the view of Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Abū Ḥanīfah. Others said that a man may not perform ablution with water left over by a woman, whereas a woman may perform ablution with water left over by a man. Others maintained that a man may not perform ablution with a woman’s leftover water unless she is in a state of major ritual impurity or menstruation. Still others said that neither of them may use the other’s leftover water unless they begin the ablution together, and another group said: it is not permissible even if