Abu Dawud said: And some of them said: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rāfiʿ.

67 — Aḥmad ibn Abī Shuʿayb and ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ibn Yaḥyā al-Ḥarrānī narrated to us, they said: Muḥammad ibn Salamah narrated to us, from Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq, from Salīṭ ibn Ayyūb, from ʿUbayd Allāh ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Rāfiʿ al-Anṣārī, then al-ʿAdawī, from Abū Saʿīd al-Khudrī, who said: I heard the Messenger of Allah ﷺ when it was said to him: "Water is drawn for you from the well of Buḍāʿah, and it is a well into which the flesh of dogs, menstrual rags, and human excrement are thrown." The Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: "Indeed, water is pure; nothing makes it impure."

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— Both in ancient and recent times, Muslim and disbeliever alike, they held to the purification of waters and their protection from impurities. So how could it be imagined of the people of that era — who were the highest in rank among the people of religion, the best of the Muslim community, while water in their land was scarcer and the need for it more pressing — that this would be their practice with water and their degradation of it? The Messenger of Allah ﷺ cursed the one who defecates at sources of water and its pathways, so how [could it be] of one who took springs and sources of water as resting places for filth and dumping grounds for refuse? This is not befitting of their condition. Rather, this was only because the location of this well was in a low-lying area of the earth, and the torrents would sweep these impurities from the roads and courtyards and carry them and cast them into it. And because of the abundance of the water, the falling of these things into it had no effect upon it, nor did it change it. So they asked the Messenger of Allah ﷺ about its matter, in order to know its ruling regarding purity and impurity. And his answer to them was that water is not made impure by anything — meaning the abundant kind of it, whose description is the description of the water of this well in its abundance and the great quantity of its fullness.

(1) The ḥadīth is authentic by its multiple chains and supporting witnesses, and this chain is weak due to the unknown status of Salīṭ ibn Ayyūb. Muḥammad ibn Isḥāq explicitly stated his direct hearing (al-taḥdīth) in Aḥmad (11815) and others, so the suspicion of his tadlīs is removed. See its full citation in what precedes.

And ʿadhir al-nās is the plural of ʿadhirat, which is excrement. It was called that because they used to throw it into the ʿadharāt, which are the courtyards of the houses.