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Does Bleeding Break Your Wudu?
Wudu is the wash Muslims do before praying, and it has to be redone if something cancels it. So: you cut your finger, or your nose starts bleeding, or you notice a graze on your knee, and you had already made wudu. Do you have to make it again? Two schools say yes and two say no, and if you have ever prayed behind an imam from a different background you have probably seen both answers in the same room.
Positions at a Glance
Yes, if the blood flows. The Hanafis hold that wudu is broken by filth leaving the body, and blood counts. The condition is that it actually flows away from the cut. If a bead of blood sits on the surface and you wipe it off, your wudu stands. If it runs past the wound and onto the skin around it, you need to make wudu again.
The Hanafi reasoning is consistent with how they treat wudu generally. What breaks it is najasah, meaning filth, leaving the body. They do not limit that to the front and back passages the way the other schools do, so blood from a cut falls under the same rule as anything else impure that comes out of you.
The flowing condition is the part people miss, and it is the practical heart of the ruling. A pinprick that beads and stops has not flowed. Blood that runs down your finger has. Classical Hanafi works set this out in detail, including al-Kasani in Bada'i al-Sana'i and al-Shurunbulali in Maraqi al-Falah.
The Hanafis also cite a narration worded 'wudu is from every flowing blood'. It is worth being straight about its standing: it is not in the six main collections. It comes through Ibn Adi's al-Kamil, and al-Tahanawi graded it hasan in I'la al-Sunan. The other schools do not consider it strong enough to carry the ruling, which is a large part of why they land elsewhere.
No, and the amount makes no difference. In the Shafi'i school only what comes out of the front or back passage breaks wudu. Bleeding, cupping, nosebleeds and vomiting do not break it at all, whether there is a little or a lot.
On the expedition of Dhat ar-Riqa, two companions were sent to guard a mountain pass. One slept and the other stood praying. An enemy shot the praying man with an arrow. He pulled it out and carried on. He was shot three times, and only after finishing his bowing and prostration did he wake his companion. Asked why he had not called out at the first arrow, he said he was in the middle of a surah and did not want to cut it short. Graded sahih by al-Albani in Sahih Abi Dawud. Abu Dawud placed this story in his Book of Purification, which tells you what he thought it proved.
Imam an-Nawawi states in al-Majmu' that only a short list of things breaks wudu, and that bloodletting, cupping and vomiting are not among them. The same ruling runs through the standard Shafi'i manuals, including al-Muhadhdhab, Fath al-Mu'in and Tuhfat al-Muhtaj.
Keep two separate questions apart here, because they get mixed up constantly. Blood is still impure in the Shafi'i school, so a bloodstain on your clothes is its own issue about cleanliness. That is a different question from whether your wudu survived. In this school the blood may need dealing with while the wudu is untouched.
No. The Malikis break wudu only for a normal discharge leaving by its normal exit. Blood does not qualify, so a cut, a graze or a nosebleed leaves your wudu intact.
al-Jaziri records the Maliki rule in Al-Fiqh ala al-Madhahib al-Arba'ah: wudu breaks only by a customary discharge from the customary place. He then lists what that excludes, and blood is on the list along with pus and serous fluid.
The Malikis hold this firmly enough that it applies even to blood leaving by the front or back passage. Blood is not what those passages normally produce, so it does not trigger the rule. For them the question is what came out, rather than where it came from.
The Malikis read the story of the wounded sentry at Dhat ar-Riqa the same way the Shafi'is do. A companion prayed through three arrow wounds and finished his prayer, and nothing in the account suggests he needed to start again. Graded sahih by al-Albani in Sahih Abi Dawud.
Yes, but only if it is a lot. Any impure discharge from the body outside the two passages breaks wudu for the Hanbalis, on condition that the quantity is substantial. Vomit falls under the same rule.
al-Jaziri states the Hanbali position as breaking wudu 'by every impure discharge from the rest of the body, other than the front and back passages, on condition that it be a lot'.
What counts as a lot is not a fixed measure, and that is deliberate. al-Jaziri explains that it is judged for each person relative to their own body, taking their build into account. The same small pool of blood might count as a lot from a slight person and not from a large one. So the Hanbali answer to 'how much is too much' is that you weigh it against yourself.
In practice this puts the Hanbalis between the Hanafis and the other two. A Hanafi asks whether the blood flowed at all. A Hanbali asks whether there was a serious amount of it. A small nick that bleeds briefly will usually not break wudu in this school.
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