are frequented by jinn and devils, so there is even stronger reason to prohibit prayer there than in camel enclosures. Likewise, the bathhouse is the abode of Satan. Two positions are reported from Ahmad concerning ablution after eating unwholesome meats, depending on whether the ruling has an intelligible rationale and can therefore be extended to other cases, or not. Unwholesome foods permitted out of necessity, such as the meat of predatory animals, have a greater satanic influence than camel meat, so there is all the more reason to perform ablution after eating them.

Scholars have differed over ablution following the discharge of impurities from somewhere other than the two private passages, as in bloodletting, cupping, wounds, and vomiting; after touching women, with or without desire; after touching the penis; and after laughing aloud. Some Companions, such as Sa‘d and Ibn ‘Umar, would perform ablution after touching the penis, while many of them would not. Is ablution after this obligatory or recommended? Two positions are reported from both Mālik and Ahmad. Al-Shāfi‘ī held it to be obligatory, whereas Abū Hanīfah’s position is that it is not obligatory.

Likewise, regarding touching women with desire, the view that ablution is recommended is tenable. As for its being obligatory, however, the evidence supports only the contrary. No one can ever produce a report from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—that he used to command his Companions to perform ablution after touching women or after the discharge of impurities, despite how commonly these matters arise.

As for the words of Allah Most High,

“or you have touched women,”

they refer to sexual intercourse, as Ibn ‘Abbās and others explained