impure, they would have been obliged to purify their mouths, hands, and clothes for prayer, and to purify their vessels. This would therefore have had to be explained to them, for clarification may not be delayed beyond the time it is needed. Yet the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, did not explain to them that they were obliged to remove any of it that came into contact with them. This indicates that it is not impure. Clearly, had camel urine been like human urine, he would most likely have warned them very sternly about it.

Anyone who says that they knew it was impure and knew that purification from impurities was obligatory has gone far beyond what is plausible and advanced a claim whose falsity can be known with certainty, for several reasons:

(First: When the Sharia was first instituted, its rulings were less widely known. After Islam spread and knowledge was transmitted and disseminated, they became clearer and more evident. If, even to this day, its impurity has not become clear to us—rather, most people regard it as pure, and the Successors generally held this view; indeed, Abū Tālib and others said, “The early generations neither regarded it as impure nor took precautions against it.”

Abū Bakr ibn al-Mundhir—on whom most later scholars rely when reporting consensus and disagreement—mentioned that the early generations generally regarded urine as pure. He then said:

“Al-Shāfiʿī said: ‘All urine is impure.’”

He said:

“We know of no one before al-Shāfiʿī who said that the urine and droppings of livestock are impure.”

(I say: It has been reported that Ibn ʿUmar was asked about the urine of a she-camel, and he said: