Islamic Fiqh > Purification (Tahara) > Ablution (wudu): complete guide > Specific questions of wudu
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Updated on 27 September 2026 at 3:52 AM
Certain questions of wudu belong to the particular case: sleep and its postures, touching one's own privy or another's, touching women, and wiping over the turban or veil. This page presents them with the fullest school positions and reference figures.
The four schools agree that sleep in general breaks wudu, as does the sleep of one lying down, leaning, or propped, on the words: "the eye is the tie of the waterskin; whoever sleeps let him perform wudu", narrated by Abu Dawud (203) and Ibn Majah (477) from Ali, hadith judged good, the sleeping eye loosening as the waterskin loosened. The nuance bears on one who sleeps seated in a prayer posture, or stable on his seat.
Abu Hanifa breaks nothing, however long the sleep, so he stays in a prayer posture; lying on the side breaks. Al-Jassas explains: only the sleep one says of it that he rose imposes wudu, and one who sleeps seated, prostrate or bowing does not rise in the literal sense. The early generations discharge the seated sleeper with no support: Ibn Abbas reports that the Prophet delayed the night prayer until the people slept, then prayed with no re-wudu mentioned, and Anas reports: "we awaited the prayer at the mosque, some dozed, others slept, with no fresh wudu"; Muslim reports both with the versions of Ibn Umar and Ibn Abbas (al-Bukhari 545, Muslim 639). The Prophet also said of his eyes: "they sleep and my heart does not sleep", in the two collections (al-Bukhari 1147, Muslim 738), a sign sleep is no impurity in itself.
With the malikis, attention goes to sleep's depth, not posture: deep sleep breaks wudu lying, prostrate, seated or standing; sign of deep sleep: not perceiving loud voices near, or dropping what one holds unawares; light sleep, no break, the way of al-Lakhmi. An intermediate maliki way requires wudu of the deep sleeper in all postures and of the light sleeper lying and prostrate. With the shafi'is, the position fixed by ash-Shafi'i, transmitted by an-Nawawi, is the sleeper stable on his seat: wudu stands, otherwise broken, however long; the unsteady sleeper lets gas pass most of the time, the Law raising that outward sign to presumption. With the hanbalis, three divisions: lying breaks always; seated breaks if long, held if brief; standing, bowing and prostrate break in the madhhab, Ahmad holding transmissions both ways, the Al-Insaf retaining that standing sleep follows seated.
The companions of the Messenger of Allah slept then prayed without performing wudu, until their heads nodded.
narrated by Muslim (376) and Abu Dawud (200)
Drowsiness (nu'ass), distinct from sleep, breaks nothing with ash-Shafi'i and his companions: Ibn Abbas's hadith, narrated by Muslim, describing the Prophet's night prayer while the child beside him dozed. The difference, they write: sleep overcomes reason and drops sight; drowsiness dulls the senses without dropping them.
The jurists agree that touching one's privy without the hand, by another limb, breaks nothing. The disagreement begins with the palm. First school: the hanafis and Ahmad in a transmission chosen by Ibn Taymiyya impose nothing and recommend wudu only, on the hadith of Talq ibn Ali: a man asked the Prophet what he holds of touching the privy after wudu, and he answered: "is it but a piece of you?", or "a part of you"; narrated by Abu Dawud (181, 182), at-Tirmidhi (85), an-Nasa'i (165) and Ibn Majah (483), authentic; the privy being a limb of the body, like the thigh or the nose.
Second school: shafi'is, hanbalis in the madhhab and malikis in the most famous view require wudu, on several texts: Busra bint Safwan: "whoever touches his privy let him perform wudu" (narrated by Abu Dawud, 180, at-Tirmidhi, 82, an-Nasa'i, 444, and Ibn Majah, 479, authentic); Abu Hurayra: "if one of you reaches his privy with his hand, no veil between the two, let him perform wudu" (narrated by Ibn Hibban, 1118, and al-Bayhaqi, 630, authentic); Abdallah ibn Amr adds the woman: "every man who touches his privy let him perform wudu, and every woman who touches hers let her perform it" (narrated by Ahmad, 7076, and al-Bayhaqi, 626, authentic); and Umm Habiba confirms it (Ibn Majah, 481, al-Bayhaqi, 617). Their arguments: the narrators of nullification are more numerous; the Prophet forbade touching the privy with the right hand (al-Bukhari 153, Muslim 267), proof it is not like the rest of the body; and Talq's hadith, the later one, reads on touch above a screen, as prayer suggests.
Third position, the malikis in detail: Malik's stipulation was to order wudu as long as prayer had not occurred, and to repeat prayer performed after the touch within its time, nothing after it left. His companions split four ways: Sahnun and al-Utqi impose neither wudu nor repetition; Ibn al-Qasim and Ashhab impose repetition within the time; Asbagh and Isa ibn Dinar, with Ibn Umar's view, impose wudu and repetition even outside the time; and the Baghdadi maliki school, Ismail ibn Ishaq, Ibn Kabir, Ibn al-Muntab and Abu al-Faraj al-Abhari, conditions everything on pleasure felt, as with touching women. With shafi'is and hanbalis, no difference between deliberate touch and unintended; a transmission of Ahmad and a maliki view require intent to touch, Ahmad gripping his fist to illustrate.
The shafi'is and the hanbalis in the madhhab require wudu of one who touches his anus, no difference between front and rear, on Aisha's hadith: "whoever touches his privy let him perform wudu", the word privy naming both passages by them, the anus being one of the two passages of impurity. Their nullification reaches only contact of the passage zone itself, not its surroundings. The malikis confine nullification to the palm: the back of the hand is no instrument of touching, touching the anus with its back resembles contact by the thigh. The hanbalis deny the difference: the wording says "if one of you reaches with his hand", the hand's back part of it, and the hand's rulings apply to its whole. The hanafis break nothing for mere touch, their general rule on body limbs.
Touching another's privy, even a child's: the shafi'is and the hanbalis require the toucher's wudu, small or grown, living or dead, since touching another is a disobedience, more apt to desire and to matter leaving; one touches his own by need, another's without need. The hanafis break nothing absolutely. The malikis apply the rule of contact with desire: pleasure sought or felt, wudu broken; otherwise not; al-Qarafi in the Dhakhira generalizes non-nullification without distinction.
Touching an animal's privy: an-Nawawi writes it breaks nothing with the shafi'is, and all scholars follow him; the hadith of the privy aims at the human one, the animal's contact provoking neither desire nor emission. Touching a child's privy with the shafi'is and hanbalis therefore follows the rule of another's; with the malikis, that of desire.
The woman touching her own privy: the shafi'is, Malik in one transmission and the hanbalis in the madhhab break her wudu as the man's, on Ibn Amr's words cited above: "every woman who touches her privy let her perform wudu". The hanafis, the malikis in the famous report and Ahmad in one transmission break nothing: the famous hadith aims at the male privy, with no call to any emission; the famous maliki report holds even deep pressure, a finger or fingers introduced, without nullification. Ibn Abd al-Barr transmits from Malik both ways: like the man, or lightened with nullification only in case of pleasure, explained as insertion between the lips; the most famous being the assimilation to the man.
Three views. First: no touch breaks, with desire or without: hanafis, Ahmad in one transmission, the choice of Ibn Taymiyya, save full carnal contact stopping short of penetration. Proofs: Aisha reports she slept before the Prophet, legs toward his qibla, and he nudged her foot to pray (narrated by al-Bukhari, 375, and Muslim, 512); "he kissed one of his wives then went out to prayer without wudu"; and Abu Umama reports the story of the man complaining of contact short of full relation, to whom the Prophet said: your morning wudu suffices (Muslim 2765), then recited: "establish prayer at the two ends of the day... the good deed drives away the bad" (Hud 114), adding it holds for all people (Muslim 2763). Another proof: the Prophet prayed while carrying Umama, daughter of Zaynab and Abu al-As: standing he carried her, in prostration he set her down (al-Bukhari 494, Muslim 543); Abu Bakr sees in it the proof of the view of the generality of scholars: carrying a small child nearly entails touching her body, and this was never counted among the nullifiers. Touch is no impurity in itself, and spouses' contact is habitual, nullifying it would have thrown people into hardship. Ibn Abbas reads the verse "or if you have touched women" (an-Nisa 43) as full relation, he being the Quran's interpreter; Ibn Taymiyya argues further: Arabic hears in this touch only that of desire, as with the word touch in the divorce verses (al-Baqara 236, 237 and al-Ahzab 49), and none ever reported the Prophet ordering wudu after mere contact of wives despite the vastness of the practice.
Second: every skin contact between man and woman breaks the wudu of toucher and touched, with desire or without: shafi'is and Ahmad in one transmission, on the verse of an-Nisa 43, the second Quranic reading "or if you have touched women", the reality of touch being the meeting of the two skins, as in "we touched the sky" (al-Jinn 8); ash-Shafi'i reports in his Musnad from Malik, from Salim from his father: "whoever kisses his wife or touches her with his hand must perform wudu"; the scope aims at the foreign woman and the wife, not the forbidden kin nor the small girl not desired.
Third: touch with desire breaks, without desire not: malikis and Ahmad in the famous report. Their conditions: the toucher adult, the body touched habitually desirable, desire sought or felt, by hand or any part, even a supernumerary limb or over attached hair; the mouth's kiss always breaks with them, desire sought, felt or not, since it invites desire. Ibn Abd al-Barr holds the maliki way the most correct: the Companions transmitted only two senses of contact, full relation, or what calls it; one who tends his wife's wound or feeds her breaks nothing. Ibn Taymiyya ranks: the weakest of the three views is touch without desire on a desirable body, ash-Shafi'i's; touch with desire breaking holds the text and the analogy; the third way makes touch the relation itself. The woman touching the man follows the same grid with the shafi'is, symmetry of the two skins.
The hanafis, the malikis and the shafi'is do not admit wiping over the turban or veil: the verse targets the head, the turban is none, the reality of wiping requires water meeting the limb, and the turban's wiper is no head's wiper; prayer would not stand on that purification alone; the limb admits no screen, consensus on the tayammum's face and hand, and the turban is a separate screen, like the glove for the hand and the veil for the face.
Ahmad admits wiping over the turban and khimar, on the many texts: al-Mughira ibn Shu'ba describes the Prophet performing wudu and wiping over his two boots and his turban (narrated by at-Tirmidhi, 100, authentic); Muslim reports (275): "he wiped over the two boots and the khimar"; Ahmad counts five paths from the Prophet, and cites the act of Abu Bakr and Umar. Their argument: had the hadith been absent, the words "imitate those who come after me, Abu Bakr and Umar" and "follow my sunna and the sunna of the rightly guided caliphs" would suffice; none their like would ignore the head's wiping named in the Book; and one who objected to the turban merely objected, as with boots, the objection weakening no Sunna.
The hanbali conditions: the turban covers the whole head save what custom uncovers, front of scalp and ears; a visible cap under the turban permits wiping over it; the turban must hang under the chin, in the manner of the Muslims' turbans, hard to remove, with or without back flap, small or large; no point under the chin nor back flap, no valid wiping, resembling the headgear of the taxed people, easy to pull off. The part uncovered by custom calls for wiping directly with the turban, Ahmad naming it after al-Mughira, the disagreement bearing on the duty to combine both. If the wearer pulls off the turban after wiping, his purity falls by Ahmad; the woman wipes over no turban, even by necessity on the sound hanbali report. Under real hardship removing it, the malikis admit wiping over the turban, partial direct wiping staying obligatory on their retained view; the hanafis finally validate the soaked veil letting fresh water reach a quarter of the head, worn cloth closing its pores.
The most defensive common conduct: sleep light or seated stable with no fresh wudu, avoid the palm's contact with the privies repeating a simple wudu as precaution, keep touching women to the useful without desire, and wipe the bare head save real turban constraint, covering then what custom leaves uncovered.