'Abdullāh Ibn 'Abbās / Muḥammad al-Fīrūzabādī
تفسير : (o ye who believe! when ye rise up for prayer) and you are not in a state of minor ritual purity, he has taught you what to do, saying: (wash your face, and your hands up to the elbows, and lightly rub your heads) as you please (and (wash) your feet) above the sole of the feet (up to the ankles. and if ye are unclean) if you are in a state of major ritual impurity, (purify yourselves) with water. (and if ye are sick) of smallpox or are wounded. this was revealed about 'abdullah ibn 'awf (or on a journey, or one of you cometh from the closet) or one of you has urinated or defecated, (or ye have had (sexual) contact with women) or had sex with women, (and ye find not water) you are unable to use water, (then go to clean, high ground and rub your faces) with the first blow (and your hands) with the second blow (with some of it) i.e. some of the dust. (allah would not place a burden) constraint (on you, but he would purify you) by means of dry ablution from minor and major ritual impurities (and would perfect his grace) his favour (upon you, that ye may give thanks) for his blessing and legal dispensation.
Jalāl al-Dīn al-Maḥallī
تفسير : o you who believe, when you stand up, that is, when you intend to go, to pray, and you are in [a state of] ritual impurity, wash your faces, and your hands up to the elbows, that is, including them [the elbows], as is clarified in the sunna; and wipe your heads (the bā’ in bi-ru’ūsikum is for ‘adherence’), that is to say, wipe over [the head] adhering [the hand] closely, without [excessive] water pouring over; the noun [ra’s, ‘head’] is generic, and so the minimum required to fulfil [the stipulation] is acceptable, which is the wiping of some of the hair, as al-shāfi‘ī asserts); and your feet (read wa-arjulakum in the accusative as a supplement to aydīyakum; or wa-arjulikum in the genitive because of its adjacency to [the genitive] bi-ru’ūsikum), up to the ankles, that is, including them [the ankles], as is clarified in the sunna, and they are the two protruding bones at the juncture of the legs and the feet. the interposing of the wiping of the head between [the mention of] the hands and the feet, which are washed, is intended to show the requirement of [a specific] order during the purification of these limbs, as al-shāfi‘ī asserts. in addition, the requirement of making intention (niyya) in this [ablution], as in the other rituals of worship, is taken from the sunna. if you are defiled, purify, wash, yourselves; but if you are sick, with an illness made worse by water, or on a journey, travelling, or if any of you comes from the privy, that is, [if] he has defecated, or you have touched women (as mentioned already in the verse in [sūrat] al-nisā’ [q. 4:43]), and you cannot find water, having made the effort to look for it, then head for, seek, wholesome dust, that is, clean earth, and wipe your faces and your hands, including the elbows, with it, using two strikes (the bā’ of bi-wujūhikum, ‘your faces’, denotes ‘adherence’; it is explained in the sunna that the requirement here is for the wiping to encompass the whole of these two parts. god does not desire to make any hardship for you, any constraint, in the obligations he has imposed on you with regard to ablution, washing and purification with dust; but he desires to purify you, of filth and sins, and that he may perfect his grace upon you, through islam, by explaining the laws of the religion; so that you might give thanks, for his graces.
Sahl al-Tustari
تفسير : when you prepare for prayer, wash your faces...[sahl] said:purification consists of four things: purity of the source of food, truthfulness of the tongue, avoidance of all sins, and the humility in one’s innermost secret (sirr). in turn, each one of these four corresponds to the purification of the outer members of the body.his words, exalted is he:
…but he wishes to purify you...that is, to purify your state, your character and your actions, so that you return to him in a state of true poverty (ḥaqīqat al-faqr) without being attached to any [secondary] cause.purification is of seven kinds: the purification of knowledge from ignorance, the purification of remembrance from forgetfulness, the purification of obedience from disobedience, the purification of certainty from doubt, the purification of the intellect from foolishness, the purification of opinion from slander, and the purification of faith from anything which is alien to it. furthermore, each punishment constitutes a kind of purification, except the punishment of the heart, which is hardness. [concerning] his words, exalted is he:
