alive, then a person in ihrām may not slaughter a wild ass. If he presented him with meat (1), it is possible that he knew it had been hunted for him and therefore returned it to him. This is clarified in the hadith of Jābir. He said: Mālik’s report that he presented him with an ass is more firmly established than the report of those who related that he presented (2) him with some ass meat.

I say: As for the report of Yahyā ibn Sa‘īd from Ja‘far, it is undoubtedly mistaken. There was only one incident, and all the narrators agree that he did not eat any of it, except in this anomalous and rejected report.

As for the disagreement over whether the gift was a live animal or meat, the version reporting meat is preferable for three reasons:

First: Its narrator preserved it accurately and recorded the details of the incident, even noting that it was dripping with blood. This shows how accurately he remembered the account, down to this seemingly insignificant detail.

Second: This wording explicitly states that it was part of the ass—meat from it. It therefore does not contradict the wording, “He presented him with an ass.” Rather, the latter can be understood in light of the version mentioning “meat,” with the meat being called by the name of the animal. Such usage is perfectly acceptable in the language.

Third: All the other versions agree that it was a portion of the animal. They differ only over which portion it was: its hindquarters, half of it, its leg, or some of its meat. These versions do not contradict one another, since it could have been the half containing both the hindquarters and the leg, making each description valid. Ibn ‘Uyaynah abandoned the wording “an ass” and continued using “ass meat” until his death. This indicates that it had become clear to him that he had only