for the Messenger ﷺ said, “Command your children to pray when they are seven, strike them for it when they are ten, and separate them in their beds.” His ﷺ directive to separate children at that age proves that intercourse is already possible, and intercourse is the very cause of birth. It follows, therefore, that a boy of ten can have paternity ascribed to him even though legal puberty is not presumed at that age, for a ruling of puberty is established only by its unmistakable signs. We rely on the mere possibility of intercourse to attach lineage to him in order to safeguard the child’s ancestry and out of precaution for him. The third situation: if a man pronounces a revocable divorce and the woman gives birth after four lunar years have passed from the divorce yet before her waiting period ends, the child’s lineage is ascribed to him. The same applies if the revocably divorced wife delivers before four lunar years have elapsed from the end of her waiting period; the child is attributed to him because a revocably divorced woman is still, in effect, a wife, so the post-divorce period is treated like the time before it. Among the circumstances that establish a master’s paternity for a child born of his slave-girl are the following: he confesses to having had intercourse with her—or credible testimony to that effect is produced—and the slave-girl then gives birth six months or more after that proven intercourse; in this case the child’s lineage is traced back to him, for she has become his firāsh (bed), and the Messenger ﷺ said, “The child belongs to the bed.” Another case is when the master admits to having lain with his slave-girl, after which he sells her or sets her free, and she later gives birth in less than six months from the date of sale or manumission—and the child survives.