Section
The admissible experts in qiyāfa—the art of determining kinship by bodily resemblance—must, at a minimum, be upright, Muslim, and experienced. The sounder opinion further requires that they be free men; no fixed number is stipulated, nor is descent from the tribe of Madlaj a condition.

Whenever two men dispute the parentage of an unknown child, the child is presented to those experts. The same procedure is followed when both men have had intercourse with the same woman, she bears a child that could biologically belong to either of them, and they each claim him—whether their intercourse occurred under a mistaken presumption of permissibility (shubha) or because the woman was jointly owned by them.

Likewise, if a man has relations with his wife, then divorces her, and another man subsequently sleeps with her by mistake or through an invalid marriage contract; or if a man cohabits with his slave-girl, later sells her, and the purchaser then has relations with her without either man observing the required waiting period (istibrāʾ); or, according to the sounder view, if he has intercourse with a woman who is already married—then, should she give birth between six months and four years after the two acts of intercourse and both men claim the child, the matter is again referred to the qiyāfa experts.

If a menstrual cycle separates the two acts of intercourse, paternity is attributed to the second man—unless the first act took place within a valid marriage, in which case the husband’s claim prevails. In either scenario, it is immaterial whether the two contenders share the same religion and status of freedom or differ in those respects.