Jurisprudential-Literary Rethinking in the Recitation of ‘Arjulukum’ and the Inferred Ruling of the Verse of Wuḍū

Wiping (masḥ) the foot or washing it in wuḍū is one of the most contentious issues in Shīʿah and Sunnī fiqh. The sixth verse of Sūrah al-Māʾidah is one of the main sources of this contention. Because the word ‘arjulukum’ in the aforementioned verse has been recited with the three diacritical marks of rafʿ, naṣb (a diagonal line over a letter(, and jarr (a diagonal line under a letter). There is a discrepancy among the fuqahā (jurists) in explaining these recitations and in the inferred ruling of them, that each of whom has tried to justify the verse according to his own opinion. By using library sources, this study has been analyzed the three recitations and the inferred ruling of them from a literary point of view. The difference of this study is that the contents of the verse have been studied and analyzed according to all three recitations, far from prejudice, without jurisprudential prejudice, without considering the narrations which interpreted it, and only in accordance with literary and syntactic rules. According to this study, the rafʻ recitation and one of the types of the naṣb and jarr recitations are not useful for any of the opinions. It is permissible to use the ruling of wiping the foot from the other types of the naṣb and jarr recitations without any problem, while the use of the rule of ghusl (ritual bathing) is not permissible and is flawed.