Al-Qurtubi on Taharah and Salah Verses

The legal analysis of purity and prayer occupies some of the most detailed and technically demanding passages of Tafsir al-Qurtubi. Two verses in particular draw extended treatment: Surah al-Ma'idah, verse 6 — the comprehensive verse on wudu (ritual ablution), ghusl (full body purification), and tayammum (dry purification with earth) — and Surah al-Baqarah, verse 238 — the command to guard the prayers, especially the middle prayer.

For Surah al-Ma'idah 6, al-Qurtubi's commentary runs to several pages covering virtually every legal dimension of ritual purification that classical jurisprudence had identified. He begins with the verse's address — 'O you who believe, when you rise to perform prayer, wash your faces and your arms to the elbows, and wipe your heads and your feet to the ankles' — and immediately notes that the Arabic command 'when you rise' (idha qumtum) requires interpretation. Does it mean one must perform wudu before every prayer regardless, or only when one is in a state of ritual impurity? He presents the positions: Ibn Abbas and a group of Companions held that fresh wudu was required before every prayer; the majority of later scholars held that wudu is required only upon losing one's state of ritual purity. Al-Qurtubi concludes with the majority position, citing the sound hadith that the Prophet, peace be upon him, combined prayers on one day of the Hudaybiyyah expedition with a single wudu.

He then moves through each element of wudu in sequence. For washing the face: what exactly constitutes 'the face' (from hairline to chin, and from ear to ear), whether rinsing the mouth and nose are obligatory or recommended (a madhab-level disagreement between Maliki/Shafi'i on one side and Hanbali/Hanafi on the other), and the ruling on washing a beard. For wiping the head: the critical disagreement between the Maliki school (which requires wiping the entire head) and the Shafi'i school (which allows wiping any part, even a single hair or the minimum defined by some jurists). Al-Qurtubi presents the evidences for both positions — the Malikis relying on the ba in mamsahu as a ba indicating extent, the Shafi'is treating it as a ba indicating instrumentality — and defends the Maliki view while acknowledging the strength of the opposing argument.

For the wudu verse's mention of tayammum — striking clean earth and wiping the face and hands — al-Qurtubi discusses the conditions that permit its use (inability to find water, or medical prohibition from using water), what materials count as 'clean earth' (the Hanafi broadening to include anything from the earth's surface versus the Maliki and Shafi'i restriction to proper soil), and the number of strikes required.

For Surah al-Baqarah 238, the 'middle prayer' dispute receives thorough treatment. Al-Qurtubi surveys all the scholarly opinions — Asr, Dhuhr, Fajr, Maghrib, and even Jumu'ah — with the hadith evidence for each. He concludes, as did Ibn Kathir and the majority of later scholars, that the evidence for Asr is the strongest, but he presents the reasoning for the other views with full fairness. He then draws from the verse the principle that prayer must be guarded with complete attentiveness and performed standing unless one is unable to do so, and discusses the legal conditions under which sitting, lying down, or other modified prayer positions are permitted.