Kitab al-Adab and Kitab al-Libas

The final major sections of Sunan Abu Dawud dealing with etiquettes and dress are among the most practically applicable in everyday Muslim life. These chapters preserve the Prophet's guidance on the full range of social conduct — from how to greet people and enter homes to how to dress, which colors and materials are permitted, and how to present oneself in public — and they reflect the tradition's understanding that the prophetic model extends to the texture of daily life, not only to ritual worship and legal transactions.

Kitab al-Adab opens with hadiths on the greeting of peace (salam). The Prophet said: 'You will not enter Paradise until you believe, and you will not believe until you love one another. Shall I not tell you of something that, if you do it, you will love one another? Spread the greeting of peace among yourselves.' This hadith frames the etiquettes of social interaction not as peripheral courtesies but as directly connected to faith and communal love. The chapters that follow cover the proper wording of salam, who should greet whom first (the young greeting the old, the rider greeting the walker, the smaller group greeting the larger), and the prohibition of greeting non-Muslims with the Islamic salam in a leading position.

The chapters on entering homes preserve the hadiths on seeking permission (isti'dhan): knocking or calling out up to three times, not standing directly in front of the door, and departing without resentment if no one answers. The hadith that permission exists because of the gaze — meaning the purpose of seeking permission is to protect everyone's privacy from unexpected intrusion — encapsulates the ethical principle behind the specific rules.

The section on names is notable. The Prophet changed names he considered inappropriate: he renamed a man called Hazn (hardness) to Sahl (ease), renamed villages with inauspicious names to more positive ones, and expressed displeasure at names that claimed attributes belonging only to Allah. He also encouraged names that his community would be called by on the Day of Judgment — Abdullah and Abdurrahman being among his most beloved. These hadiths spawned an entire sub-discipline of Islamic names and their rulings.

Kitab al-Libas — the Book of Dress — covers the permitted and prohibited forms of clothing with characteristic juristic thoroughness. The prohibition of silk for men, the permission for women, and the exceptions for medical need are recorded from multiple chains. The rules on the length of garments — the prohibition of lowering clothing below the ankles out of pride (isbaal) — are covered with hadiths that distinguish between deliberate pride and inadvertent length, a distinction that became important in later juristic debate.

The chapters on gold and silver jewelry follow the silk rules: gold rings and gold vessels are prohibited for men. The prohibition of wearing the signet ring on certain fingers appears in hadiths that record the Prophet's own preference, and the variation in narrations was used by jurists to determine which finger positions were preferred, permitted, or disliked.

The dress chapters conclude with hadiths on dyes, patterns, and types of fabric. The Prophet's own dress habits — the colors he preferred, the types of garments he wore, the way he wore his izaar and rida — are recorded by Companions who observed him closely, providing a detailed picture of prophetic practice in dress. These narrations became the basis for a rich tradition of scholarship on Islamic dress that balances Quranic principles of modesty and the avoidance of arrogance with the cultural diversity of the Muslim world across continents and centuries.