the positions unique to his school.

By contrast, the three Imams—Abu Ḥanīfah, Mālik, and al-Shāfiʿī—and Abu Ḥanīfah’s two principal students hold that the matter is deferred until his death is verified, or until a span passes in which a man of his age would ordinarily not remain alive. The length of that span is left to the discretion of the judge, for the default presumption is that he is still living; therefore, his wife may not remarry and his estate is not to be divided.

Some meticulous scholars have argued that one waits for the missing person (mafqūd) only until it becomes more probable than not that he no longer exists, and that this is not tied to ninety years or to any other specific period, because no proof fixes such a limit. The governing legal principle is that when certainty cannot be achieved, one acts on what is most likely.

Second: When the circumstances of his disappearance point to probable death—such as embarking on a ship that then sinks, so that some passengers are rescued while others are lost; being stranded in a desert; or vanishing from the midst of his family—then they wait four years from the time he went missing.

2. In reality there is no textual evidence for setting a fixed term in either scenario. The issue varies with changes in eras, modes of communication, media coverage, and the individual circumstances of those who go missing. The best course is the independent judgment of the sharʿī judge, who must weigh the facts and their attendant conditions. Allah knows best.

3. The report from ʿUmar is evidence for the first scenario, in which safety appears more likely, whereas the hadith of al-Mughīrah would have supported the majority view had it been sound, but it is weak.