that very spot. In this connection I am fond of the remark of Abu Bakr ibn al-Arabi—the well-known jurist with the definite article, not the other Ibn Arabi—who said: “In my view, all five practices mentioned in this hadith are obligatory. Were a person to neglect them, his appearance would no longer resemble that of human beings, let alone of Muslims.” I have taken this quotation from Fath al-Bari, 10/279. It displays fine legal insight; those who have faulted him here have simply missed the mark. The hadith is reported by al-Bukhari 10/276, 378; Muslim 1/153; Abu Dawud 2/194; and al-Nasai 1/7. The alternate wording is found in Ahmad 2/229, 239, 283, 410, 489, all on the authority of Abu Hurayra. (1) Because the verb appears in the passive voice, the report is treated as marfu (legally attributed to the Prophet) according to the majority of scholars—especially since the alternate narration explicitly states that the one who set the time-limit was the Prophet ﷺ himself. Al-Shawkani’s attempt (1/96) to weaken the report because it contains Sadaqah b. Musa overlooks the fact that al-Nasai transmitted it through another chain that is sound; the same independent chain is supplied by Abu al-Abbas al-Asam in his Hadith collection (no. 34 in my copy) and by Ibn ʿAsakir 3/275/2.