Purification Rulings in the Quran

Al-Tahawi's primary Quranic text for purification rulings is Surah al-Ma'idah (5:6), which contains the most detailed Quranic legislation on ritual purification: 'O you who believe, when you rise to pray, wash your faces and your hands up to the elbows, and wipe your heads and wash your feet up to the ankles.' Al-Tahawi reads this verse as establishing the four obligatory acts of wudu and derives from the grammatical structure of the verse important legal conclusions. The use of the conjunction 'and' (wa) linking the acts establishes their connection but not their sequence, which led Abu Hanifa to hold that sequence is not a formal condition of wudu, unlike the Maliki and Shafi'i schools which derive sequence from the verse's sequential order. This grammatical argument is a representative example of how Hanafi Quranic exegesis operates.

The verse also contains the ruling on tayammum (dry ablution): 'and if you do not find water, then perform tayammum with clean earth, wiping your faces and your hands.' Al-Tahawi derives from this that tayammum requires the striking of clean earth (sa'id) twice, once for the face and once for the hands including the elbows, the Hanafi position distinguishing them from those who hold that the hands in tayammum are limited to the wrists. The word 'sa'id' is interpreted broadly by Abu Hanifa to include any substance of the earth's surface, including sand, stone, and clay, making tayammum valid even on surfaces that do not leave dust on the hands, unlike the Shafi'i restriction to soil that produces adhering dust.

The famous legal disagreement over what is meant by 'or you have touched women' (aw lamastumus-nisa') in the purification verse is treated at length by al-Tahawi. The Hanafi interpretation, following a reading attributed to Ibn Abbas among the companions, is that 'touching' here is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. On this reading, mere skin contact between a man and a woman, even a non-mahram woman, does not break the state of ritual purity and does not require new wudu before prayer. The Shafi'i school and others read the verse as referring to any physical touching, making skin contact a cause of impurity. Al-Tahawi marshals the evidence for the Hanafi reading, including the fact that the same expression is used in the Quran elsewhere as a euphemism for intercourse, and that requiring wudu after any contact would create impractical hardship.

The verse on major ritual impurity (janabah) is also derived from Surah al-Ma'idah: 'and if you are in a state of janabah, purify yourselves.' This establishes the obligatory full-body bath (ghusl) following sexual intercourse or seminal emission. Al-Tahawi records the Hanafi ruling that the obligatory components of ghusl are three: rinsing the mouth (madmadah), inhaling water into the nose (istinshaq), and washing the entire body. The obligation to rinse the mouth and nose in ghusl is the distinctive Hanafi position, differing from the Shafi'i school which regards these as merely recommended. Al-Tahawi argues from the verse that 'purifying oneself' demands a complete purification of every accessible surface, and that the mouth and nasal cavity are internal surfaces accessible during purification.