The stronger view, however, is that this is not obligatory. Rather, washing them with the intention of scooping up water suffices, without having to wash them again, as in tayammum. Moreover, one washes one’s forearms with one’s hands, thereby washing the inner surfaces of the hands.

It would also be reasonable to say that washing them at the outset and while washing the face remains sufficient to discharge the obligation regarding them, just as has been said of tayammum. For He says concerning ablution:

“Wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows,”

just as He says concerning tayammum:

“Wipe your faces and your hands with it.”

Thus, in the verse concerning ablution, He mentions the hands after the face.

However, the report found in al-Bukhārī alone makes clear that he wiped the backs of his hands before his face. The other reports are general in wording and imply that, when he performed the wiping, he did not wipe his palms after his face. The same therefore applies to the backs of his hands: rather, he wiped their backs together with their inner surfaces, since wiping the hands as a whole is closer to observing the prescribed order. Wiping the parts of a single limb together is preferable to wiping them separately.

Moreover, the palms would then be wiped together with the backs of the hands. Counting this wiping is preferable to counting their wiping along with the face. What some of our fellow jurists have stated—that one should use the fingers for the face and the inner surfaces of the palms for the backs of the hands—is contrary to what the hadiths describe.