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Hadith That A Baby Boy's Urine Is Pure But A Baby Girl's Urine Is Impure
Can you please explain the conteof this Hadith of this hadith? It is mentioned that the urine of a girl is considered so dirty that it is required to be cleaned, whereas the urine of aboy, which is just not that dirty, is not required to be cleaned. Is this a authentic Hadith?
Hadith source: Musanad ahmed 531
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Hadith That A Baby Boy's Urine Is Pure But A Baby Girl's Urine Is Impure
updated 1 week, 1 day ago
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This narration, in addition to being reported in Musnad Ahmed Narrations 563, 757, 1149, 26875, 26877, 26878 (Publisher: مؤسسة الرسالة), is also reported in Sunan Tirimdhi (https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:610) and Sunan Ibn-e-Maja (https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:525) and several other books as well. The chain of these narrations have been categorized as Sahih by both Shuaib Al-Arnaut and Shikeh Albani.
Hadith scholars have tried to explain the meaning of this narration:
A quotation from Qatada (A tabaee and one of the narrators) is mentioned at the end of many of these narrations that:
“This is so, as long as they do not eat, when they eat, then both of them are washed.”
And Imam Tirimdhi also writes (https://sunnah.com/tirmidhi:71):
وهو قول غير واحد من اهل العلم من اصحاب النبي صلى الله عليه وسلم والتابعين ومن بعدهم، مثل احمد , وإسحاق، قالوا: ينضح بول الغلام ويغسل بول الجارية، وهذا ما لم يطعما، فإذا طعما غسلا جميعا.
“It is the saying of more than one of the people of knowledge among the Companions of the Prophet, may God’s prayers and peace be upon him, and the followers (Tabaeen), and those after them, such as Ahmad and Ishaq, who said that water should be sprinkled on the urine of the boy and the urine of the girl should be washed, and this ruling is until they both start eating, and when they start eating, the urine of both will be washed“.
The scholars have understood it this way but the words of Hadith do not make any such apparent qualification of an infant reaching eating age. In the narrations of Musnad Ahmed 26875 and 26878, this viewpoint is negated because Hazrat Hasan (rta) was said to had urinated on the lap of Prophet Muhammad (sws) at the age when he had already started to walk and he was already weaned off breast milk(see: [Foot Note 1]). Therefore, this reason seems to be in contradiction to other incidents mentioned on the same issue.
The most appropriate reason for such saying seems to be the knowledge of that time. Just the way Prophet Muhammad (sws) gave many opinions on worldly matters on the basis of the knowledge of his time, this opinion also seems to belong to that domain and He (sws) clealrly told us to not take such opinions as religious directives. Cleaning anything impure is a requirement of religion and this applies to both urine and faeces, whether it be of an infant, an adult or an animal (based on today’s knowledge that they are all impure). But if something was known to be impure as per knowledge of that time, it would be cleaned thoroughly and if something was known to be less impure, then it would not be cleaned with equal thoroughness. Other similar examples can be found in famous cross-pollination incident of Medina, Hadith which forbids sleeping on the stomach and another to not let kids out after sunset. More details on this issue of such Ahadith can be studied in the following thread:
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[Foot Note 1]
حَدَّثَنَا يَحْيَى بْنُ أَبِي بُكَيْرٍ , قَالَ: حَدَّثَنَا إِسْرَائِيلُ ، عَنْ سِمَاكٍ ، عَنْ قَابُوسَ بْنِ أَبِي الْمُخَارِقِ ، عَنْ أُمِّ الْفَضْلِ ، قَالَتْ: رَأَيْتُ كَأَنَّ فِي بَيْتِي عُضْوًا مِنْ أَعْضَاءِ رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ , قَالَتْ: فَجَزِعْتُ مِنْ ذَلِكَ، فَأَتَيْتُ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ فَذَكَرْتُ ذَلِكَ لَهُ، فَقَالَ:” خَيْرًا، تَلِدُ فَاطِمَةُ غُلَامًا، فَتَكْفُلِينَهُ بِلَبَنِ ابْنِكِ قُثَمٍ” , قَالَتْ: فَوَلَدَتْ حَسَنًا، فَأُعْطِيتُهُ، فَأَرْضَعْتُهُ حَتَّى تَحَرَّكَ أَوْ فَطَمْتُهُ، ثُمَّ جِئْتُ بِهِ إِلَى رَسُولِ اللَّهِ صَلَّى اللَّهُ عَلَيْهِ وَسَلَّمَ، فَأَجْلَسْتُهُ فِي حِجْرِهِ، فَبَالَ، فَضَرَبْتُ بَيْنَ كَتِفَيْهِ، فَقَالَ:” ارْفُقِي بِابْنِي، رَحِمَكِ اللَّهُ أَوْ أَصْلَحَكِ اللَّهُ أَوْجَعْتِ ابْنِي” , قَالَتْ: قُلْتُ يَا رَسُولَ اللَّهِ، اخْلَعْ إِزَارَكَ، وَالْبَسْ ثَوْبًا غَيْرَهُ حَتَّى أَغْسِلَهُ، قَالَ: ” إِنَّمَا يُغْسَلُ بَوْلُ الْجَارِيَةِ، وَيُنْضَحُ بَوْلُ الْغُلَامِ” .
حضرت ام الفضل سے مروی ہے کہ ایک مرتبہ میں نے خواب میں دیکھا کہ گویا نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم کا کوئی عضو میرے گھر میں آگیا ہے، مجھے اس خواب سے بڑی پریشانی لاحق ہوئی میں نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم کی خدمت میں حاضر ہوئی اور اپنا خواب ذکر کیا، نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم نے فرمایا تم نے اچھا خواب دیکھا ہے، فاطمہ کے یہاں ایک بچہ پیدا ہوگا اور تم اپنے بیٹے قثم کے ذریعے آنے والے دودھ سے اس کی بھی پرورش کرو گی، چنانچہ ایسا ہی ہوا کہ حضرت فاطمہ کے یہاں امام حسن پیدا ہوئے اور میں نے ہی انہیں دودھ پلایا یہاں تک کہ وہ چلنے پھرنے لگے اور میں نے ان کا دودھ چھڑادیا۔ پھر میں انہیں لے کر نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم کی خدمت میں حاضر ہوئی اور انہیں نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم کی گود میں بٹھادیا انہوں نے نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم پر پیشاب کردیا یہ دیکھ کر میں نے ان کے کندھوں کے درمیان ہلکا سا ہاتھ مارا تو نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم نے فرمایا اللہ تم پر رحم کرے میرے بیٹے پر ترس کھاؤ! تم نے میرے بیٹے کو تکلیف دی میں نے عرض کیا یا رسول اللہ! آپ اپنی یہ چادر اتار دیں اور دوسرے کپڑے پہن لیں تاکہ میں اسے دھودوں نبی صلی اللہ علیہ وسلم نے فرمایا دھویا تو بچی کا پیشاب جاتا ہے، بچے کے پیشاب پر صرف چھینٹے مار لئے جاتے ہیں۔
(Musnad Ahmed: 26875)
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I still have doubts about the authenticity of the Hadith. How can someone of sound mind express something so contentious? Besides Muhammad’s status as a prophet, a person characterized by wisdom and kindness would refrain from making such remarks, like suggesting that a girl’s urine is more impure than a boy’s.
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Any person, even a Prophet, lives within bounds of the worldly knowledge of their time unless something is revelaed to them by Allah which is very rare because their primary responsibility is to divulge the news of Akhirah or in other words, the message of God. Just because they are prophets, it does not mean they are taught all the laws which govern this universe. In worldly matters, there are plenty of examples that prophets rely on the available knowledge of their time to make wordly decisions, with the only excpetion when God intervenes because of something which directly relates to the mission of Prophets.
There are many examples where Prophet Muhammad (sws) gave opinions of worldly matters which are not scientifically true today but were known to be true by the human knowledge of that time. In one incident of cross-pollination of medina, his opinion was in contradiction to the already established science of that time. Simialrly, we see matters of medicine of the Prophet (sws) famously known as Tibb-e-Nabwi which has no scientific basis today but was knowledge of that time, similarly hadith about not sleeping in one specific posture etc etc. When solar eclispe happened in Medina, Prophet (sws) under apprehension that maybe God had made a decision against his nation, offered long Salah of eclipse to seek God’s mercy until the time solar eclipse vanished.
This specific Hadith only seems contentious because we are studying it in the light of today’s knowledge. It was a simple expression of knowledge of that time and does not have to do with girl or boy per se, but with the understanding of the anatomy of baby boy and baby girl. And it must be kept in mind that it is only the infants which are being discussed here, not the adults. Had there been some violation of kindness and wisdom on the part of Prophet Muhammad (sws), then the same would have extended to adults as well, which seems to not be the case because as said earlier, it has more to do with the knowledge of that time.
Now there can be two approaches that can be followed in this regard:
i) To see it in the context explained above.
ii) to outright reject it as saying of the Prophet (sws)
We do not follow this approach where we easily put a Hadith in abeyance specially when the chain seems to be reliable and the content can be easily understood in the light of the Hadith Principles.
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Can we say that the difference in the purification of male and female infant urine does not mean that one is more or less impure in itself? Both are considered najis in Islam, but this was just prescribed as an easier method for the urine of boy.One possible wisdom,mentioned by some scholars,is practical ease because of the anatomy of a male infant, his urine may project or spread onto different parts of the clothing of those carrying him, making washing more difficult.Does this make sense brother @Umer25 ?
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Wa alaykum al-Salam, brother Abdul Gafoor. Apologies for the delay.
Your conclusion is correct: neither urine is more or less impure in itself, both are impure, and both are to be cleaned. But the route you have taken to it — that sprinkling was prescribed as an easier method, with a wisdom of practical ease — is not the explanation given above, and I would not endorse it. It brings the narration back inside deen, one way or another, which is precisely what the earlier answer avoided.
Three reasons:
1. There was no prescribed method of purification to begin with. A concession (rukhsah) presupposes a prior obligation from which relief is being granted. In our understanding, religion has laid down the requirement of Taharah, not the technique of achieving it — how one cleans has been left to human judgement and urf, and one may stop wherever one is satisfied that cleanliness has been achieved . So there is no obligation here for a “prescribed easier method” to be easier “than that obligation” — the framing has nothing to attach to.
2. The words of the narration do not turn on ease, and neither did the earliest attempt to explain it. The only variable in the Hadith sentence is which gender it is, not the garment, the spread, or the difficulty of laundering. And ease does not track: a girl’s urine soaked into a large ‘chadar’ receives no relief, while sprinkling a few drops on a soaked cloth is not a lighter form of washing at all — it is a statement that washing is not required.
Moreover, Sunan Ibn Majah 525 (https://sunnah.com/ibnmajah:525) carries an appended report in which Imam al-Shafii is asked this very objection — “when the two types of water (urine) are the same” — and his answer is not practical ease. It is that “the urine of the boy is of water and clay, but the urine of the girl is of flesh and blood,” because Hawwa was created from Adam’s rib. So the tradition’s own earliest explanation of this report understood it as a real difference in the two urines, and grounded that in a Genesis motif with no basis in the Quran. That is exactly the kind of material the earlier answer identified: the knowledge and lore of that time.
3. The ‘anatomy and ease’ wisdom fails on the same fact that defeated the classical “before solid food” qualification. As noted above, Musnad Ahmad 26875 and 26878 place the incident when Hasan (rta) was already walking and already weaned. A child seated in a lap is not the hard-to-launder case the theory requires — there is no wide spray across the clothing of those carrying an infant — and the answer given was still framed in terms of ‘whose‘ urine it was.
Finally, the cost of the Hikmah approach. Every wisdom proposed for this narration — flesh and blood versus water and clay, degrees of najasah, ease of laundering — ends up asserting some genuine asymmetry between a boy and a girl, and then has to defend it as religion. Placing the statement in its proper category, as explained above, is the only reading that asserts none. It also spares us the two costs of your framing: a sex-differentiated purification directive with no Quranic basis, and a directive of deen resting on individual reports that the fuqaha themselves split over — Imam Tirmidhi reports sprinkling as the view of ‘some’ of the people of knowledge, ‘such as Ahmad and Ishaq’ which is how one describes a juristic opinion, not an established Sunnah.
So the conclusion is to clean both, by whatever method satisfies you, with no difference between the two genders. We should try to resist the instinct to manufacture a wisdom for every narration. It feels like “tazim of Hadith“, but it ends with us defending as religion a claim about girls that we would never have advanced from the Quran. Leaving a worldly remark in its worldly place honours the Prophet (sws) more, not less — it is the boundary he drew himself.
God knows the best.
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Assalamualaikum
How do we distinguish between whether a hadith contains a religious advice or it was just the Prophet (PBUH) advising on a worldy matter ? Because purification from urine has implications like the ability to pray Salah in those clothes.
How can we ascertain that it’s just an advice when not praying in clothes free from najāsah would invalidate our prayers?
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Wa’alikum Salam.
This is the right question to ask, and it has two parts. Let me take the second one first, because the premise it rests on is the thing that needs correcting — once that is cleared, the first question becomes much easier.
1. Salah is not invalidated by najasah on clothing
Your worry is built on a premise you have inherited from the standard fiqh — that praying in clothes not free of najasah invalidates the prayer. On our understanding, that is not the case. Clean clothing belongs to the etiquette (adab) of Salah, not to its conditions of validity:
“The prerequisite of prayer is purification of body. A najas attached to body doesn’t make the body impure. Therefore it doesn’t affect the prayer.” — (Discussion 96249)
“Since cleaning the body after excretion and urination (including madhi and mani) and Wuzu or Ceremonial Bath are requirements for Salah, therefore, it can be inferred that that the spirit of religion dictates that one’s clothes should also be clean from these things. But for Salah to be valid, the primary requirement is cleanliness of the body as mentioned above; clean and decent clothes fall under etiquettes of Salah and etiquettes should not be taken lightly. Since etiquettes are an integral part of us humans in every social sphere, therefore, it is difficult to assume a situation where such etiquettes are neglected by human beings intentionally when it comes to their relationship with God.” (Discussion 62091)
What the Quran makes a prerequisite of Salah is Taharah of the body — Wudu and, where required, ghusl (al-Nisa 4:43; al-Maidah 5:6) and Istanjah being a separate Sunnah on its own. It nowhere makes the ritual valid or void according to a spot on one’s garment. Clean, decent clothing is an adab — real, not to be deliberately neglected, but not a shart.
So notice what follows: the validity of your Salah was never hanging on the sprinkle-versus-wash question at all. Even on the most demanding reading of that narration, no one’s prayer was ever at risk because in either case, there is some level of cleaning activity involved. The anxiety in your question is a consequence of the mainstream fiqh premise, not of anything in the Quran or Sunnah — and I should say plainly that this is a genuine point of difference between our understanding and the standard schools, not a matter on which everyone agrees.
And now the decisive point, which I would ask you to weigh carefully:
Consider which reading actually endangers Salah. If we treat the sprinkling as a religious rule, then a Muslim today — who knows perfectly well that both urines are equally impure — is being told by religion to offer his prayer in a garment he knows is soiled. That is the reading which sets a person against the overall sense of cleanliness, as complemented by Quran and Sunnah. On our reading, he simply washes both and prays with an easy conscience. Your concern for Salah is therefore an argument against treating this narration as deen, not for it.
2. How to tell a religious directive from a worldly remark
The general answer is that the burden of proof runs the other way from how we usually assume. We tend to start from “this is a Hadith, therefore it is religion, unless something forces us to say otherwise.” Ghamidi sahab’s principle starts from the opposite end: Deen is a defined and closed body of content, and something is religion only if it can be shown to belong to it.
“Other than the Quran and Sunnah, nothing is Deen, nor can it be declared as Deen… in Deen, there is no addition of any aqidah or action from them [the ahad reports]. The things related to Deen that come in them, in reality, are included in the Quran and Sunnah, and are the interpretations and clarifications of this Deen, and for the practice of it, the best example of the Prophet (sws) is stated. The circle of Hadith in this regard is this only. What is it? Tafhim o Tabyin and the statement of the best example… Hence, in the capacity of Deen, nothing outside this circle can neither be a Hadith, nor can it be accepted on the basis of Hadith”… — Response to 23 Questions, Part 169 — What is Hadith (Hadees Kya Hai), 34:32–37:15 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZeB-auWYGHI&t=2093s)
From this, four practical questions to put to any narration:
(i) Does it explain, clarify, or exemplify something already present in the Quran or the established Sunnah? If yes, it is religious — in its capacity as tafhim o tabyin. If it stands free, introducing a belief or an act or a law with no root in the Book or in the established practice of the ummah, then it is not deen — however sound its chain. Chain-authenticity tells you the Prophet (sws) said it; it does not by itself tell you he said it as religion. The way He (sws) gave a statement during the famous cross-pollination incident of Medina.
(ii) Did it reach us the way deen reaches us? Sunnah is transmitted by the ummah’s unbroken practice, generation to generation — not by individual narrators. We did not learn Salah, wudu, ghusl or hajj from any isnad; we learned them because every Muslim generation has done them. So ask of a claimed religious requirement: do all Muslims everywhere practice it — or did the jurists divide over it? Division among the fuqaha is proof that a thing was never established religious practice. (On the boy/girl urine question, Imam Tirimdhi himself reports sprinkling as the view of some of the people of knowledge— which is how one describes a juristic opinion, not a Sunnah.)
(iii) Is the statement prescriptive or informational? Religion issues directives; it does not certify facts about the physical world. Look at the form of the sentence. Is it “do this / avoid this / this is obligatory”? Or is it a statement about how something is? Hadith on boy/girl urine question presupposes a difference between the two urines — it is a report of an assessment, not the form in which the Quran or Sunnah legislates.
(iv) Does the subject-matter lie in a domain human beings can investigate for themselves? Agriculture, medicine, anatomy, technique etc. — these we can find out. Religion tells us what we could not have discovered: God, the Hereafter, worship, morals. Prophets are not sent to teach method. And where the Prophet (sws) did speak in such a domain, he marked it himself — “أَنْتُمْ أَعْلَمُ بِأَمْرِ دُنْيَاكُمْ” (https://sunnah.com/muslim:2363), and “it was just a personal opinion of mine, and do not go after my personal opinion; but when I say to you anything on behalf of Allah, then do accept it” (https://sunnah.com/muslim:2361).
3. The principle that resolves your difficulty: religion gives the rule, human knowledge supplies the facts
This, I think, is what your question is really reaching for. It is not that some subjects are “religious” and others “worldly” in watertight compartments — you are quite right that purification touches worship. It is that within a religious matter, deen lays down the directive, and its application to particular facts is deliberately left to human reason and fitrah:
Consider four cases where the religious stake is every bit as high as yours, and the structure is identical:
Religion supplies the rule Human knowledge supplies the fact:
i) Face the Kabah in Salah Which direction the Kabah lies from your city — geography
ii) Pray at these five times When those solar positions occur — astronomy, today a printed timetable
iii) Do not consume intoxicants Whether a given substance intoxicates — chemistry, including substances unknown in the 7th century
iv) Be clean; avoid filth What counts as filth — fitrah, and today also knowledge
In every one of these, a mistaken fact would never have been a religious error. If someone in an earlier century faced slightly the wrong way because the geography of a distant land was imperfectly known, we correct the geography and keep the rule; we do not say the qiblah has changed, nor that the rule was defective.
That last row is exactly our case. The Quran never gives a list of Najasah — because it did not need to; our fitrah is the ultimate guide in this regard.
You do not know urine is impure because of a Hadith. You know it from the innate sense God placed in every human being , which is why non-Muslims recognize filth as filth too. And on that same basis: we today know both urines are impure alike. So we keep the rule and correct the fact. Nothing of religion is lost; a seventh-century assessment of two substances is.
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@Umer25 Aslamualykum brother.plz reply.
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Just a food for thought.
I think we can fully respect Hadith and the enormous scholarly effort that went into preserving and classifying it, while still recognizing that it does not occupy exactly the same level of certainty as the Quran.
When a Hadith is classified as sahih, that classification is the result of human scholarship isnad, ilm al-rijal, continuity of transmission and other principles developed by Hadith scholars. It gives us good reason to take a narration seriously, but it is still a transmitted historical report.
The Qur’an, on the other hand, makes a very different claim about itself:
إِنَّا نَحْنُ نَزَّلْنَا الذِّكْرَ وَإِنَّا لَهُ لَحَافِظُونَ
“Indeed, We have sent down the Reminder, and surely We are its Guardian.”
(15:9)Of course, when the Quran tells us to obey the Messenger, there is no question about obeying him. If the Prophet were standing before us and gave us an instruction, I don’t think any Muslim would hesitate for a fraction of second.
But that is slightly different from saying that every narration attributed to him and authenticated centuries later must carry exactly the same certainty as though we had personally heard him say it.
This particular example illustrates the problem nicely. The Quran establishes taharah and purification as religious principles:
وَلَٰكِن يُرِيدُ لِيُطَهِّرَكُمْ
“Rather, He intends to purify you.”
(5:6)But the Quran nowhere says that the urine of a baby girl is intrinsically more impure than that of a baby boy, or creates such a male/female distinction.
So if a sahih narration appears to make such a distinction, I would study it, respect its historical value and try to understand its context. But I would hesitate to convert that distinction itself into a divine, timeless rule when the Quran does not establish it.
I sometimes have the same thought when reading other Hadith narrations for example, the report recommending drinking camel urine as a treatment, or the report in which the Prophet is reported to have contemplated burning the houses of men who failed to attend congregational prayer. Perhaps these reports preserve particular circumstances, contemporary knowledge, rhetorical emphasis, or something else which we no longer fully possess.
We can study all of that. But sahih should not mean “this is now as certain as a verse of the Quran.”
Perhaps absolute certainty about whether every individual statement attributed to the Prophet was transmitted exactly as he spoke it will only be possible when we meet him.
Until then, for me the safest approach is: give Hadith the weight that good historical testimony deserves, but test our religious understanding against the Quran, whose preservation and divine authorship are themselves part of our faith.
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