1016 – Abu Hurayrah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: “Two women from the tribe of Hudhayl fought. One of them hurled a stone at the other, killing her and the child in her womb. They brought the case before the Messenger of Allah ﷺ, and he ruled that the compensation (diyyah) for her fetus was a ghurrah: a male or female slave. He also adjudged the blood money for the woman to be paid by her ʿāqilah (her agnatic relatives) and allotted her estate to her children and those entitled with them. Ḥamal ibn al-Nābighah al-Hudhalī said, ‘Messenger of Allah, how can compensation be due for one who neither drank nor ate, who neither spoke nor cried at birth? Such a life should simply be overlooked.’ The Messenger of Allah ﷺ replied, ‘This man is one of the brothers of the soothsayers, on account of the rhymed prose he has just uttered.’ Agreed upon (1).

Abu Dawud and al-Nasa’i also transmitted it from Ibn ʿAbbas: ‘ʿUmar (may Allah be pleased with him) asked, “Who witnessed the ruling of the Messenger of Allah ﷺ concerning the fetus?” Ḥamal ibn al-Nābighah stood up and said, “I was between two women; one of them struck the other …,”’ and he related the incident in abridged form. Ibn Hibban and al-Hakim declared it authentic (2).

Hadith grading:
The report is ṣaḥīḥ. It has come through a chain whose transmitters are sound, and it was authenticated by al-Hakim, Ibn Hibban, and Ibn Hazm. Ibn Hazm said in al-Muḥallā, ‘Its chain reaches the pinnacle of soundness.’