in His [Mighty] Book (1), saying: ‘Wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows, and wipe your heads and your feet up to the ankles’ [Surah al-Mā’idah: 6]. Ibn Abbās (2) said: ‘Two body parts are to be washed, and two are to be wiped.’ [But they altered this] (3) and made washing obligatory.”
The response is that those who transmitted from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—the manner of ablution (4), in both word and deed, and those who learned ablution from him and performed it during his lifetime [while he watched them and approved of it] (5), then transmitted it to those who came after them, were greater in number (6) than those who transmitted the wording of this verse. All Muslims performed ablution during his lifetime, and they learned it only from him—peace and blessings be upon him—for this practice had not been known among them during the pre-Islamic period. They saw him perform ablution on more occasions than anyone but Allah Most High could count, and they transmitted from him references to washing the feet in hadiths whose number Allah alone knows. Indeed, through multiple chains of transmission, they reported in the Sahih collections and elsewhere that he said: “Woe to the heels and the soles of the feet from the Fire!” (7) Yet if the prescribed duty were to wipe the top of the foot, then
(1) N and M read: “which Allah Most High explicitly stated in His Book”; K reads: “which Allah Most High explicitly stated in His Mighty Book.”
(2) A and B read: “Ibn Abbās—may Allah be pleased with them both.”
(3) The words “so they altered it” appear only in B and K.
(4) A and B read: “They transmitted the manner of ablution from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace.” 1
(5) The text between square brackets is absent from N, M, and W.
(6) The words “in number” are absent from A and B.
(7) The hadith is narrated with the wording “Woe to the heels from the Fire” from Āishah, Abū Hurayrah, and Abd Allah ibn Amr—may Allah be pleased with them—in al-Bukhārī, 1/17–18 (Book of Knowledge, chapter “One Who Raised His Voice While Teaching”), 1/26–27 (Book of Knowledge, chapter “One Who Repeated a Hadith”), and 1/40 (Book of Ablution, chapters “Washing the Feet and Not Wiping the Heels” and “Washing the Heels”); Muslim, 1/213–215 (Book of Purification, chapter “The Obligation of Washing Both Feet Completely”); and al-Musnad (al-Ma'ārif ed.), nos. 6809, 6883, 6976, 7103, 7122, and 7788. The hadith is also narrated with the wording “Woe to the heels and the soles of the feet from the Fire” in Sunan al-Tirmidhī, 1 (Book of Purification, chapter “What Has Been Related Concerning ‘Woe to the Heels from the Fire’”), and al-Musnad (al-Halabī ed.), 4/191, from Abd Allah ibn al-Hārith ibn Juz’—may Allah be pleased with him.