Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfah maintain that if a pilgrim shaves his head without any compelling need, he is liable for nothing more than a single blood offering.

The jurists then differed as to whether deliberate intent is a condition for the fidyah incurred by removing a source of harm: must the act be done knowingly, or are the forgetful and the intentional treated alike? Mālik answered that the one who acts intentionally and the one who forgets are equal in this regard, and this is likewise the position of Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Thawrī, and al-Layth. In one of his two opinions al-Shāfiʿī—and the Ẓāhirīs—held that no fidyah is due from the forgetful person.

Those who stipulate necessity for the fidyah cite the explicit text as proof. Those who oblige it even when there is no necessity argue that if it is required of one who is compelled, it is all the more obligatory for one who is not. Those who distinguish between intentional and forgetful violations point to the Sharīʿah’s frequent differentiation between the two and to the general wording of the verse, “There is no blame upon you for what you do unintentionally, but only for what your hearts have deliberately intended” (al-Aḥzāb 33:5), as well as the Prophet’s statement, “My community has been excused for error and forgetfulness.” Those who make no such distinction draw an analogy with many acts of worship in which the Law does not differentiate between mistake and forgetfulness.

With respect to the form that the fidyah for harm may take, the scholars unanimously agree that three options are given: fasting, feeding, or an animal sacrifice, in accordance with the Almighty’s words, “then a ransom of fasting, or charity, or sacrifice” (al-Baqarah 2:196). The majority hold that the feeding is to six needy persons and that the sacrifice is at minimum one sheep. Al-Ḥasan, ʿIkrimah, and Nāfiʿ, however, said that the feeding should be to ten needy persons and the fasting should be ten days. The majority rest their case on the sound ḥadīth of Kaʿb ibn ʿUjrah. Those who require ten days of fasting base their view on analogy with the fasting prescribed for tamattuʿ and on treating fasting and feeding as equivalent, as well as on the verse concerning compensation for hunting: “or the equivalent thereof in fasting” (al-Māʾidah 5:95).

They also differed over how much food is to be given to each of the six poor persons mentioned in the text, because the transmitted reports on expiatory feeding vary. Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Ḥanīfah, and their companions said that each needy person is to receive two mudd measured by the Prophet’s mudd. Al-Thawrī related that the amount is half a sāʿ of wheat or a full sāʿ of dates, raisins, or barley—an opinion likewise reported from Abū Ḥanīfah and regarded by him as the basic rule for expiations.

As for the circumstances that oblige the fidyah, the jurists are agreed that it becomes due upon anyone who shaves his head out of necessity—whether because of illness or because some creature on his head is harming him. Ibn ʿAbbās said that the illness refers to sores on the head, while the harm is lice and the like; ʿAṭāʾ said that the illness is headache and the harm is lice and the like.

The majority further hold that whenever a muḥrim avails himself of anything that has been forbidden to him—wearing stitched clothing, shaving the head, clipping the nails—he must pay the fidyah, namely a blood offering (though they differ as to whether feeding may substitute), and they draw no distinction between necessity and otherwise in these matters. The same rule applies to the use of perfume. Some scholars said that clipping the nails entails no liability, while others said that it requires a blood offering. Ibn al-Mundhir reports that the prohibition of nail clipping for the muḥrim is a matter of consensus.