could not find any water with which to bathe. He was unaware that tayammum also removes major impurity; he only knew its ruling for minor impurity. So he exercised his own ijtihad and reasoned that just as part of the ablution limbs are wiped with earth for minor impurity, so too major impurity must require covering the whole body with earth by analogy with water. He therefore rolled about in the dust until it coated his body, and then he prayed.

When he returned to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ he felt uneasy about what he had done, since it was based on personal reasoning, and he told him the whole story to see whether he had acted correctly or not.

The Prophet ﷺ replied, “It would have sufficed you, instead of spreading earth over your whole body, to strike the ground with your two hands once, then wipe your left over your right, the backs of your hands, and your face.”

Scholarly disagreement

The jurists later differed on two points: 1) Is a single strike of the earth enough for both the face and the hands, or are two strikes required? 2) Must the wiping extend up to the elbows?

Some scholars—including al-Shāfiʿī—held that two strikes are mandatory: one for the face and a second for the hands up to the elbows, and they cited several hadiths as evidence, among them the report recorded by al-Dāraquṭnī from Ibn ʿUmar: “Tayammum is performed twice—one strike for the face and one strike for the hands up to the elbows.”

The majority, however—among them Imām Aḥmad, al-Awzāʿī, Isḥāq, and the hadith specialists—maintained that one strike is sufficient and that it is used only to wipe the face and the palms. They relied on sound traditions, including this very ḥadith of ʿAmmār. Ibn Ḥajar remarked, “ʿAmmār continued to issue this ruling after the Prophet’s time, and the narrator of a report best knows what it means.”

They answered the hadiths that mention two strikes and wiping up to the elbows by pointing out the well-known criticisms in their chains of transmission, and they do not place those reports on the same level as the clear, authentic traditions. Ibn ʿAbd al-Barr said, “Most of the reports traced back to ʿAmmār speak of one strike; every narration that mentions two strikes is inconsistent.” Ibn Daqīq al-ʿĪd added, “A report about tayammum with two strikes—one for the face and one for the hands—has indeed reached us, but it cannot match this ḥadith in authenticity, nor can it be set against it as an equal.”