The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, was fond of carrying the stalks of date-palm clusters, and one of them would often be in his hand. He once entered the mosque and noticed phlegm on the qiblah wall; he scraped it off, then turned to the people in anger and said,

“Would any of you be pleased to spit in his own face? When one of you faces the qiblah, he is in fact facing his Lord—Glorified and Exalted—and the angel is on his right. Therefore he must not spit to his right nor in front of him. Let him spit to his left or beneath his foot; and if he is overtaken by urgency, let him do this.” Ibn ʿUjlan then demonstrated: he should spit into a corner of his garment and fold one part of it over the other.

Abu Dawud, al-Hakim, and Ahmad transmit the report through Ibn ʿUjlan, from ʿIyad ibn ʿAbd Allah, from the Prophet. Al-Hakim declared it “sound according to the criteria of Muslim,” and al-Dhahabi agreed. In truth, however, it is merely hasan and does not meet Muslim’s criteria, as has been pointed out more than once.

Al-Targhīb states: “Ibn Khuzaymah recorded it in his Sahih, and in another version of his he added: ‘For Allah—Blessed and Exalted—is before you in your prayer; so do not direct anything harmful toward what lies before you…,’” end of hadith. Ibn Khuzaymah headed the chapter: “Censure of directing anything that qualifies as an annoyance toward the qiblah during prayer.”

I say: The hadith also has another chain from Abu Saʿid, which will be mentioned shortly, if Allah wills.

The narration establishes that spitting in the mosque toward the qiblah is forbidden for two reasons:

First: the Prophet’s anger—peace and blessings be upon him—when he saw the spittle on the qiblah wall.