become impure unless its properties change, its purification accords with analogical reasoning. For when a ruling is established on account of an effective cause, it ceases when that cause disappears. If the effective cause is the change in the water’s properties, then once that change disappears, its impurity also disappears. Likewise, since the effective cause in wine is its intoxicating potency, it becomes pure when that potency disappears. This is all the more so because impurity is introduced into water from outside, just as it is into the ground.

One might, however, say that this rests on “the question of transformation,” over which there is a well-known disagreement. There are two positions within the schools of Mālik and Ahmad. The position of Abū Hanīfah and the literalists is that impure substances become pure through transformation, whereas al-Shāfiʿī’s position is that they do not.

The view that they become pure through transformation is more correct. When an impure substance becomes salt or ash, its essential nature has changed, as have its name and properties. The texts prohibiting carrion, blood, and pork do not apply to salt, ash, or earth, either in wording or in meaning. The quality that made those substances foul is absent from these substances, so there is no basis for declaring them foul and impure.

Those who distinguish between this and wine say: “Wine became impure through transformation, so it becomes pure through transformation.” They may be answered: “Likewise, urine, blood, and excrement became impure only through transformation, so they should become pure through transformation.”

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As for the claim that performing ablution after eating camel meat is contrary to analogical reasoning, the person making it says this only because camel meat is meat, and eating meat does not require ablution. Yet the Lawgiver has