15 – Recommended baths

1 – Bathing after washing a corpse. The ruling is that already cited: “Whoever washes a deceased person should bathe, and whoever carries him should perform ablution.”

2 – Bathing after burying an idolater. ʿAlī ibn Abī Ṭālib (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: “When my father died I went to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ and said, ‘Your uncle has passed away.’ He said, ‘Go and bury him.’ I replied, ‘He died a polytheist.’ He said, ‘Go and bury him, and do nothing else until you return to me.’ I did as he instructed, then went back to him, and he ordered me to bathe.” Al-Ṭayālisī recorded it (19): Shuʿbah narrated to us from Abū Isḥāq who said, “I heard Nājiya ibn Kaʿb say, ‘I was present when ʿAlī said …,’” and he mentioned the report.

Aḥmad (1/97) and al-Nasāʾī (1/41) also transmitted it from Shuʿbah in a shortened form.

Sufyān al-Thawrī likewise narrated it from Abū Isḥāq; this version appears in Abū Dāwūd (2/70) and al-Nasāʾī (1/282–283). The chain is sound (1), and Sufyān added: “So I bathed, and he supplicated for me.”

The report has another route cited by ʿAbdullāh ibn Aḥmad in the Zawāʾid of the Musnad (1/103–129) through al-Ḥasan ibn Yazīd al-Aṣamm, who said: “I heard Ismāʿīl al-Suddi relate it from