Taharah in Al-Muhalla: Literal Approach to Purification

Ibn Hazm's treatment of taharah in Al-Muhalla exemplifies the Dhahiri school's strict textual approach — every ruling must be supported by explicit text from Quran or authentic Sunnah, and rulings derived purely by analogy are rejected. This approach produces some positions that align with one or more of the four Sunni schools and some that differ from all of them.

On water, Ibn Hazm rejects the Shafi'i distinction between water below and above two qullahs on the grounds that the hadith establishing this threshold, while accepted by Al-Shafi'i, is in his view not sufficiently authenticated to serve as the basis for a legal ruling. His alternative: water is pure and purifying unless specific evidence establishes its impurity. The mere contact of najasah with water does not render it impure unless its characteristics (taste, color, or smell) change — a position that aligns with the Maliki approach but arrives there through different reasoning.

Ibn Hazm's treatment of dog saliva and its effect on contaminated vessels presents one of his most discussed positions. He accepts the hadith requiring washing a vessel licked by a dog seven times (one of which with earth) — this is established by Sahih Muslim and not open to question. But he restricts this ruling to vessels specifically licked by a dog and does not extend it by analogy to dog touch, dog fur, or dog saliva on surfaces other than vessels.

For wudu, Ibn Hazm adheres strictly to the Quranic text (5:6): face, hands to elbows, head (wiping), feet to ankles. He does not require rinsing the mouth and nose as obligatory acts of wudu (siding with the Shafi'i and Hanbali position against the Hanafi and Maliki requirement), because the Quranic text does not mention them among the wudu acts. The prophetic practice of rinsing mouth and nose in wudu is treated as recommended (mustahabb), not obligatory.

On the question of what nullifies wudu, Ibn Hazm's strict textual approach produces distinctive positions. He rejects the Hanafi and Maliki position that consuming camel meat nullifies wudu, arguing that the hadith to this effect is outweighed by the general evidence that eating does not nullify wudu. He also rejects the Shafi'i position that touching a woman nullifies wudu, arguing that the Quranic phrase 'lamastum an-nisa'' clearly refers to sexual contact, not mere touching.

For ghusl, Ibn Hazm argues from the Quranic command to 'purify yourselves' (5:6) and the various prophetic descriptions of ghusl. His position aligns with the Shafi'i and Hanbali schools in not requiring mouth and nose rinsing as obligatory acts of ghusl, against the Hanafi school's position. He argues that 'washing the body' in the texts refers to the body's external surface, and the mouth and nose are external only in the sense relevant to tayammum, not ghusl.

Ibn Hazm's treatment of najasah and its definition is characteristically strict about requiring textual evidence. He holds that only substances explicitly identified as najis in Quran or authentic Sunnah are najis; everything else is presumed pure. This leads him to the position that the flesh of dead animals that lived in water (fish, frogs) is pure, based on the hadith 'Its water is pure, and its dead are lawful,' and to dispute the impurity status of certain substances that other schools treat as najis through analogical extension.