Is there a reward for preparing the deceased for burial?
Question What are the rewards for preparing a dead body for burial? Praise be to Allah. We do not know of any saheeh evidence to indicate the amount of reward earned by the one who prepares the deceased for burial, but the Bounty of Allaah is vast. The one who prays (the funeral prayer) for…
Question
Praise be to Allah.
We do not know of any saheeh evidence to indicate the amount of reward earned
by the one who prepares the deceased for burial, but the Bounty of Allaah
is vast. The one who prays (the funeral prayer) for the deceased will
have one qeeraat of reward (a qeeraat is equivalent to the size of Mount
Uhud), and the one who accompanies the funeral procession to the burial
will have two qeeraats. For the one who seeks reward by preparing the
body we hope that there will be even more reward.
Sa’d al-Humayd.
Washing the deceased
is fard kafaayah (i.e., if some members of the community undertake
this duty, the rest are free from blame, but if no one does it, all
will be held to blame), so there is no specific reward. But if sufficient
people do the job, it becomes Sunnah for the rest. There are no
reports which describe a specific reward, but there will be a reward
for it because it is an obligatory duty, and not doing it is a sin.
Shaykh ‘Abd al-Kareem al-Khudayr.
