cupping practitioner are khabīth.' The ḥajjām is the one who draws blood by means of cupping; his earnings are khabīth—that is, low and contemptible, not that they are unlawful. Ibn ʿAbbās, may Allah be pleased with him and with his father, said, “Had the ḥajjām’s income been forbidden, the Prophet ﷺ would not have paid him his fee.” The Prophet ﷺ himself was cupped and then paid the practitioner; had those wages been unlawful, he would never have given them, for the Messenger neither approves of what is forbidden nor assists in it. The point, rather, is that such profit is base and undignified, so a person should rise above it and, when people need cupping, perform the service voluntarily and free of charge.

Khabīth is also used for what is outright forbidden, as in Allah’s description of the Prophet ﷺ: “He makes lawful for them what is wholesome and forbids them what is impure” (Qur’an 7:157). Here the impure (khabāʾith) is the opposite of the wholesome (ṭayyibāt): carrion, pork, animals that die by strangulation, wine, and the like.

The verse means that he ﷺ forbids nothing except what is impure; it does not mean that everything ever labeled khabīth is necessarily unlawful, for the term is applied to various qualities. The intended sense is that he ﷺ prohibits only the impure.

In short, Allah has forbidden a person to single out the inferior part of his wealth for charity and has urged him to give from what is due and from what is best.

The author then cites the ḥadith of Abū Ṭalḥah, the husband of the mother of Anas—may Allah be pleased with him. Abū Ṭalḥah