whenever they learned ten verses from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—they would not proceed beyond them (1) until they had learned (2) their meaning.”

What the Imāmī Shiites have falsely alleged—namely, (3) that the obligatory act is to wipe the feet up to the two ankles, by which they mean the junction (4) of the lower leg and foot where the sandal strap is fastened (5)—is an assertion for which the Quran provides no indication whatsoever. Nor is there any known hadith (6) concerning it from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—and it is not known from the early generations of the Muslim community. Rather, they contradict the Quran, the mass-transmitted Sunnah, and the consensus of the first and foremost believers and those who followed them with excellence (7).

For the wording of the Quran requires wiping the heads (8) and the feet up to the ankles, just as it requires washing the faces and hands (9) up to the elbows. Its apparent wording thus makes clear (10) that each arm has one elbow, whereas each foot has two ankles. This applies to the genitive reading. As for the accusative reading, coordination according to syntactic position (11) is possible only when the meaning is the same, as in the poet’s words: