his Ṣaḥīḥ, from Anas, with this wording. He made no comment on it, but this is not satisfactory, since he had it through this interrupted route.

However, the hadith has many corroborating reports that raise it to the level of good, if not authentic. They include reports from Ibn ʿUmar, through two chains; from Ubayy ibn Kaʿb, Zayd ibn Thabit, Abu Hurayrah, and ʿUbayd Allah ibn ʿIkrash, from his father. I have documented them in Irwaʾ al-Ghalil (no. 85), so there is no need to repeat them. Al-Sanʿani alluded to the strengthening of the hadith in Subul al-Salam (1/73, Commercial Library edition), saying:

“Among its chains are some that reinforce others.”

Yet he mentioned it only from Ibn ʿUmar, Zayd ibn Thabit, and Abu Hurayrah, and cited it with the wording:

“The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, performed minor ablution consecutively, then said: ‘This is an ablution without which Allah does not accept the prayer.’”

The phrase “consecutively” has no basis in any of the chains he cited, nor in the other chains that we have added. The same applies to Shaykh Ibrahim ibn Duwayyan’s statement in Manar al-Sabil (1/25): “The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, performed minor ablution in sequence and said …”

Although the hadith does not explicitly mention the prescribed order, this cannot be inferred from the wording, “He washed his face once, his hands once, and his feet once, and said: ‘This …’” It is well known that the conjunction “and” merely joins items together and does not indicate sequence—particularly since the other reports to which we referred do not mention the limbs of minor ablution at all, but rather come in the concise wording: “He performed minor ablution, washing each part once, then said: ‘This is an ablution without which Allah does not accept the prayer.’”

Clearly, the demonstrative “this” here refers only to performing minor ablution by washing each part once, just as it refers in the other two passages only to washing each part twice and to washing each part three times.