—namely, his children and grandchildren—yet it does not extend upward to his forebears or outward to his collateral relatives. Thus none of his fathers or mothers, paternal or maternal uncles and aunts become prohibited to him because of that nursing, nor does the prohibition reach those on his own generational level among the collaterals, that is, his brothers and sisters.

If a child nurses from the milk of a woman who was cohabited with under an invalid marriage contract or through fornication, he is deemed the child of the wet nurse alone; since paternity is not proven by lineage, it cannot be affirmed by nursing, which is merely a subsidiary of it.

The milk of animals does not give rise to any prohibition, so if two children suckle from the same animal no milk-kinship is created between them.

The jurists disagreed about a woman whose breasts produce milk without a prior pregnancy or intercourse, and an infant then suckles from her. One opinion holds that no prohibition results because this is not true milk but only a bodily moisture; genuine milk is that which strengthens bone and grows flesh, and this fluid does not. The other opinion—adopted by al-Muwaffaq and others—is that it does in fact generate the prohibition.

Milk-kinship may be established by the testimony of a single upright woman. Shaykh al-Islam said: “If a woman known for honesty states that she nursed a child five separate times, her statement is accepted according to the sound view and the ruling of nursing is established.”

If there is doubt as to whether nursing took place at all, or whether it reached the required five sucklings, and no evidence is forthcoming, no prohibition applies; the presumption is that no nursing occurred. Allah knows best.