and in what is forbidden: vaginal intercourse, the invalidity of fasting and prayer, issuing a divorce, performing ṭawāf (circumambulation of the Kaʿbah), reciting the Quran, and remaining in the mosque. She is likewise obliged to take a full ritual bath (ghusl) when the bleeding stops, just as a menstruating woman must, and she is required to make up the missed fasts but not the prayers, exactly like the menstruating woman.

Post-partum bleeding (nifās) is the blood released by the uterus for and after childbirth; it is the remainder of the blood that had been retained during pregnancy. According to the majority of scholars, its maximum duration is forty days.

Al-Tirmidhī said: “The scholars from among the Companions and those after them are unanimously agreed that the woman in nifās refrains from prayer for forty days, unless she becomes pure before that; in that case she bathes and prays.”

If the blood of a woman in nifās stops before the fortieth day, her postpartum period has ended; she must bathe, pray, and resume whatever had been forbidden to her because of nifās.

If a pregnant woman miscarries something in which the human form is evident—meaning distinct features are discernible—and she bleeds afterward, she is governed by the rulings of nifās. In most cases the human form becomes distinguishable after three months of pregnancy, and the minimum is eighty-one days. Should she expel only a clot or a piece of tissue in which no human features are apparent, then any subsequent blood is not considered nifās; she must not leave off prayer or fasting, and the rulings of nifās do not apply to her.