be eaten once the place where it fell is out of your sight.

Abū Ḥanīfah said: If both the quarry and the dog disappear from view while the dog is in pursuit, and the hunter later comes upon the animal already dead, its meat is permissible so long as the dog has not broken off the chase; but if the dog did abandon the pursuit, we deem eating it disliked.

Their disagreement rests on two matters: first, the doubt that may arise concerning the very identity of the game or the validity of its slaughter; and second, the conflicting transmitted reports on this issue. For Muslim, al-Nasāʾī, al-Tirmidhī, and Abū Dāwūd all relate from Abū Thaʿlabah that the Prophet — peace and blessings be upon him — was asked about someone who reaches his game after three days and replied:

“Eat of it so long as it has not begun to rot.”

Muslim likewise narrates from Abū Thaʿlabah that the Prophet — peace and blessings be upon him — said:

“If you shoot your arrow and the place where it fell is hidden from you, then eat of it so long as it has not passed the night.”

In the ḥadīth of ʿAdī b. Ḥātim the Prophet — peace and blessings be upon him — said:

“If you find your arrow lodged in it and see on it no mark of a beast of prey, and you know that your arrow killed it, then eat.”

A related point of contention concerns game that is struck by an arrow or by a trained predator and then falls into water or plunges from a height. Mālik said: it may not be eaten, because one cannot tell which of the two causes killed it — unless the arrow has clearly pierced the vital organs and there is no doubt that death resulted from that; this is also the view of the majority.

Abū Ḥanīfah held: if, after being pierced through the vitals, it falls into water, it is not eaten; but if it merely tumbles from a height, it may be eaten.

ʿAṭāʾ said: it is never to be eaten once the vital organs have been struck, whether it fell into water or from a high place, because life might have departed on account of the fall or the water before the arrow’s penetration brought about death.

As for game that dies from the predator’s battering impact, Ibn al-Qāsim forbade it by analogy with the blunt instrument, whereas Ashhab allowed it, citing the general import of the verse: “So eat of that which they have caught for you” (al-Māʾidah 4). The school is nevertheless agreed that any animal that dies merely from fear of the predator is not properly slaughtered.

Another unanimously acknowledged condition, so far as I know, is that at the moment the animal is released it must be beyond the hunter’s power to seize with his bare hand without risk or difficulty — for example, if the game is caught in something, entangled, or someone has already wounded it and broken a wing or a leg.

This chapter contains many subsidiary cases in which circumstances vacillate between describing the quarry as within one’s power or beyond it — such as when the dogs drive it until it falls into a pit. Some scholars within the school said its meat may be eaten; others said it may not.

They also differed over the nature of the wound when the quarry is struck and a limb is severed: some held that the animal may be eaten except for what