Rituals
Ghusl al-Mayyit
Funerary Rituals
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Origin 622 to 800 CE
The ritual washing of the body of a deceased Muslim, performed before shrouding and the funeral prayer, and like the prayer a communal obligation. The body is washed an odd number of times, usually three, with the right side before the left and the parts washed in the ablution washed first; camphor or lote leaves are added to the water in the classical instructions. Modesty is strictly maintained throughout and the private parts are kept covered.
Men wash men and women wash women, with the exception, accepted by all schools though with different conditions, of a spouse. The body is then wrapped in plain unstitched cloth, three pieces for a man and five for a woman in the usual arrangement, and this is the same cloth in which male pilgrims enter the state of consecration, the correspondence is deliberate and is stated in the manuals.
A person killed in battle for the faith is in the majority Sunni view buried unwashed and in the clothes he died in, on the reasoning that the blood is a mark rather than an impurity. Twelver practice has its own detailed sequence and adds the washing with water mixed with lote and with camphor as distinct stages.
Facts
Origins
Origin Period Origin PeriodThe order of washing and shrouding is settled in early Islamic law 1 Place of OriginMecca and Medina, Arabia 2 Historical OriginSourced to the subject's own accountAl-Muwatta records early Islamic legal teaching on washing the body of the dead before burial, hadith material jurists cite as establishing the obligation that gives the ritual washing its basis in Islamic law. 3 Function
Stage of Life MarkedDeath and the disposal of the body 1 Practice
Who Performs ItTrained or authorised specialists 1 Washers of the same sex as the deceased, usually of the burial committee ObligationObligatory on those who meet its conditions 1Tradition: Islam Obligatory on the community rather than on the individual, like the funeral prayer it precedes FrequencyOnce, or at a turning point in a life 1 Solitary or CommunalPerformed by a gathered group 1 Form
Implements and MaterialsThree plain white shrouds for a man and five for a woman 1 Implements and MaterialsWater, with lote leaves or camphor 1 Meaning
Literal MeaningArabic for the washing of the deceased, naming the Islamic obligation to ritually wash and shroud a body before burial, ordinarily performed by close relatives of the same sex as the deceased. 4 Attributions
PurposeThe washing exists to present the body in the state of ritual purity, tahara, that a living Muslim brings to prayer, extended to the dead on the premise that even one who is beyond worldly obligation is still owed the dignity of formal purity when the community prays over them and they are returned to God, so the funeral prayer that follows is offered for someone ritually readied rather than simply present. 1 Learn More
Washing the Body for Burial
Ghusl al-mayyit is the ritual washing of the body of a deceased Muslim, performed before it is shrouded and the funeral prayer said over it. Like the washing of a living person for major purity, it is a full-body ablution, but carried out for the dead by others, generally family members or trained volunteers of the same sex as the deceased, who wash the body an odd number of times, often with water scented with camphor or lote leaves, then dry and shroud it in plain white cloth.
The washers work with modesty, keeping the body covered, and treat it with the respect due to a person; the martyr fallen in battle is, by a well-known ruling, an exception buried without this washing. The practice sits within the broader Islamic law of purity, and the jurists devoted careful attention to its order and details, so that the care of the dead is governed by the same concern for ritual cleanliness that shapes the worship of the living.
A Named Hadith, and the Bodies It Does Not Cover
The specific procedure jurists describe for ghusl al-mayyit traces closely to a hadith reporting instructions Muhammad gave to the women washing his own daughter's body, telling them to wash her an odd number of times, three or five or more if they judged it needed, using water and the leaves of the lote tree, and to add a trace of camphor on the final washing, a report that supplies both the odd number rule and the camphor still used today directly from a named, remembered event rather than from abstract legal reasoning.
Not every body that would ordinarily receive this washing is washed at all: classical law makes a specific exception for those killed in battle for the faith, martyrs, who are traditionally buried in the clothing and blood they died in rather than washed and shrouded in the usual manner, a status jurists tie to hadith describing Muhammad instructing that the dead of a particular battle be buried as they were rather than prepared in the ordinary way. That exception marks martyrdom as carrying its own distinct legal category within Islamic funeral law, one of the few circumstances in which the otherwise near universal obligation to wash a deceased Muslim before burial does not apply, and jurists have historically debated at the margins exactly which deaths qualify for this treatment.
Cross-Tradition Connections
Associated With
Twelver practice follows its own detailed sequence for ghusl al-mayyit, adding washing with water mixed with lote leaves and camphor.
Belongs to Tradition
Element Of
Related To
Hajj, Rituals The plain unstitched shrouding cloth for Ghusl al-Mayyit is the same cloth in which male pilgrims enter the state of consecration for Hajj, a correspondence the classical manuals state directly.
Sources
1. The Islamic Understanding of Death and Resurrection
Jane Idleman Smith and Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Oxford University Press, 2002Smith and Haddad, The Islamic Understanding of Death and ResurrectionView the Source 2. The Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd edition
P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W. P. Heinrichs (eds.), Brill, 2005View the Source 3. Al-Muwatta
Malik ibn Anas, 795Book of funerals, on the washing and the shrouding
4. Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity
Marion Holmes Katz, State University of New York Press, 2002Katz, Body of Text: the Sunni law of ritual purity
4. Body of Text: The Emergence of the Sunni Law of Ritual Purity
Marion Holmes Katz, State University of New York Press, 2002On the law of purity applied to the dead
Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam
Venetia Porter (ed.), British Museum Press, 2012
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