1164 – Abū Thaʿlabah (may Allah be pleased with him) narrated that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said: “When you shoot your arrow and it disappears from view, then you come upon the game, eat of it so long as it has not become putrid.” Recorded by Muslim (1).
Vocabulary of the ḥadīth
• “so long as it has not become putrid”: the verb is yun-tinu, with ḍammah on the yāʾ, fatḥah on the tāʾ, and kasrah on the nūn, from the quadriliteral root antana; it means: provided its smell has not changed and become foul.
Points derived from the three ḥadīths
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The game seized by a trained hunting dog is lawful to eat, as the Almighty says, “and that which you have trained of the predators”—meaning: Allah has made lawful for you the quarry taken by animals you have trained, such as dogs and the like. Al-Qurṭubī said: “When a dog does not eat from the prey it has caught, and the name of Allah was pronounced when it was dispatched, its catch is lawful to consume by unanimous agreement.”
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The quarry taken by a dog or any other bird or beast of prey is not lawful until the animal has been trained. The Exalted says, “while you train them according to what Allah has taught you,” that is: you discipline these predators and teach them with the intellect Allah has granted you, by which you are able to school and train them until they become capable of holding the game.
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Nayl al-Maʾārib states: The second condition for the permissibility of hunted game is that the predator be trained. Training a dog or other beasts of prey is achieved through three things:
(a) When it is released, it rushes off.