2980 — “This is how minor ablution is performed. Whoever adds to this has done wrong, transgressed, and acted unjustly”—meaning, ablution performed three times for each washing.

Al-Nasaʾī (1/33) and Ibn Mājah (1/163–164) recorded it through Yaʿlā, who said: Sufyān narrated to us from Mūsā ibn Abī ʿĀʾishah, from ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather, who said: A Bedouin came to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, asking him about minor ablution. He showed him how to perform it three times for each washing, then said the above.

I say: This is a good chain of transmission, notwithstanding the well-known disagreement over using as evidence the reports of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb from his father from his grandfather. The established practice of the earlier and later hadith masters has been to use them as evidence. It is enough for the reader to know what al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī said about him in his book al-Mughnī: “There is disagreement concerning him, but his hadith is good—indeed, above the level of good. Yaḥyā al-Qaṭṭān said: ‘If a trustworthy narrator reports from him, he is a proof.’ Aḥmad said: ‘We have sometimes used him as evidence.’ Al-Bukhārī said: ‘I saw Aḥmad, Isḥāq, Abū ʿUbayd, and the majority of our colleagues using him as evidence. So who among the people remains after them?!’”

Al-Ḥāfiẓ Ibn Ḥajar discussed at length the disagreement just mentioned and cited the statements of the imams regarding him. They are extremely contradictory—so much so that no sound conclusion can be reached from them except by someone like him, possessing mastery and critical expertise in this noble field of knowledge. He then concluded (8/48–55): “If Ibn Maʿīn testifies that his hadiths are authentic, though he did not hear them, or if his hearing some of them is established, then the most that can be said of the remainder is that they constitute a sound written finding, which is one of the recognized modes of receiving a transmission. And Allah knows best.”