Taharah in Al-Hawi al-Kabir: Al-Mawardi's Comprehensive Treatment

Al-Mawardi's treatment of taharah in Al-Hawi al-Kabir is among the most comprehensive treatments of purification law in classical Islamic jurisprudence. Building on al-Muzani's abridgment of Al-Shafi'i's Kitab al-Umm, al-Mawardi adds extensive analysis of every major question in purification law — comparing the Shafi'i positions with those of other schools, examining the hadith evidence, and resolving disputed questions within the Shafi'i school itself.

Al-Mawardi begins the taharah chapter by explaining the word's meanings in Arabic: linguistically, it means cleanliness and removal of filth; legally, it means the removal of ritual impediments (hadath) and physical impurities (najasah) through water or pure earth. He explains that Islamic law's concern with taharah has both external and internal dimensions — the external dimension of physical cleanliness and the internal dimension of the spiritual state of readiness that accompanies it.

On the classification of water, Al-Hawi al-Kabir presents the Shafi'i framework of pure-and-purifying vs. pure-but-not-purifying vs. impure water, with al-Mawardi's extensive analysis of the two-qullah threshold. He quotes the hadith of the two qullahs in full and examines its chain of transmission, noting the scholarly debate about its reliability (some hadith scholars have questioned aspects of its chain) while defending its acceptance by the Shafi'i school as a valid legal basis. He then addresses the volume of the qullah — a question on which Shafi'i scholars disagreed — and explains the resolution adopted by the school.

Al-Mawardi's comparative analysis of the water question is particularly valuable. He presents the Hanafi position (that even small amounts of water are not rendered impure without a change in characteristics), the Maliki position (similar to the Hanafi), and the Shafi'i position (that the two-qullah threshold makes small amounts more vulnerable), explaining the evidence and reasoning behind each. This comparative treatment helps the student understand not just the Shafi'i rule but why different schools reached different conclusions from shared evidence.

The treatment of najasah in Al-Hawi al-Kabir covers the Shafi'i three-tier system with extensive attention to boundary cases. Al-Mawardi examines the question of dog saliva in detail — why the hadith establishing sevenfold washing with earth applies to saliva specifically, and how this ruling extends to different scenarios (a dog licking a wet garment, a dog's wet nose touching a dry vessel, the drying and re-wetting of dog saliva). His analysis exemplifies the Shafi'i school's careful reasoning from analogy (qiyas) based on an identified rationale ('illah).

The wudu chapter in Al-Hawi al-Kabir covers every question that might arise in the performance of wudu, with al-Mawardi's characteristic thoroughness. He examines the intention requirement with particular depth — what exactly must be intended, whether the intention must specify the prayer for which wudu is being performed, and whether a general intention to worship Allah is sufficient. His resolution follows the Shafi'i school: the intention must identify the act (wudu) as a purification or as an act of lifting the hadath, and must be present at the first obligatory act.

Al-Mawardi's discussion of the invalidators of wudu includes extended treatment of the sleeping question. He examines the various hadiths on sleep and their apparent conflicts — some hadiths seem to indicate that sleeping while seated without losing the seal of the anus does not break wudu, while others indicate that any sleep breaks it. His analysis of these texts and their reconciliation within the Shafi'i framework is one of the more technically sophisticated discussions in the early Shafi'i literature on this question.