At the outset of Muḥammad's mission, God commands him: "Warn your nearest kin (
al-aqrabīn), and lower your wing to the faithful who follow you" (XXVI:214–215). The Qurʾān also makes certain monetary considerations for the Prophet's relations (
dhī'l-qurbā) (VIII:41, LIX:7), and on account of the sanctified status of the prophetic family, Muslim legal practice dictates that Muḥammad and his clan not touch the alms of the community, lest such defilements (
awsākh) pollute them. The purity of the family is most famously attested to in the verse known as
taṭhīr (purification): "God desires only to remove impurity from you, O People of the House (
ahl al-bayt), and to purify you completely" (XXXIII:33).
Muslim tradition, in accordance with the widely reported ḥadīth al-kisāʾ or al-ʿabāʾ, generally identifies Muḥammad himself; his daughter, Fāṭima; her husband and the cousin of the Prophet, ʿAlī; and the Prophet's two grandsons by this marriage, al-Ḥasan and al-Ḥusayn, as the nucleus of the "house." Shiism also allows for the imāms and, in a looser sense, other righteous progeny descended from ʿAlī and Fāṭima to be accounted as part of the family, while some Sunnī reports expand the term to include the Prophet's wives or the collateral branches of his relations, such as, the ʿAbbāsids or even the Umayyads.
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