Second: the view that makes the ruling turn on whether a perceptible change occurs. This is the position of the Ẓāhirīs and is also reported from Mālik.

The root of their disagreement lies in how they understood the ḥadīth. Some of them—namely the Ẓāhirīs—regarded it as a specific text meant for that very specific case. They therefore said: this ḥadīth is applied according to its outward wording, while every other substance is judged by whether it has changed through contact with impurity or has remained unchanged.

Others, the majority, treated it as a specific text intended to convey a general principle. They said: its purport is that mere mixing with an impure substance renders the pure substance impure. Yet they offered no reasoned distinction between a solid and a liquid, since mixing takes place in both situations, though to a greater extent when the substance is fluid. On that basis a separation ought to be made between a small admixture and a large one. Since they did not make such a distinction, it is as though they restricted part of the ḥadīth to its literal sense and dealt with the rest by analogy; for that reason the Ẓāhirīs accepted the entire ḥadīth on its apparent meaning.

As for things that are intrinsically forbidden, some are a matter of consensus and others of disagreement. Regarding the points of consensus, Muslims agree on two: pork and blood. Concerning the pig they concur that its fat, flesh, and skin are forbidden, but they differ over whether one may benefit from its hair and over the ritual purity of its hide, tanned or untanned—a matter already discussed in the Book of Purification. Concerning blood, they agree that the flowing blood of a lawfully slaughtered animal is forbidden, but they disagree over blood that is not flowing.

They likewise disagreed about fish blood: some saw it as impure, others did not; this divergence exists both inside and outside the Mālikī school. Their dispute over non-flowing blood is due to the tension between an unqualified and a qualified text.

God, Most High, says: “He has forbidden you carrion and blood” (5:3), which entails the prohibition of both flowing and non-flowing blood. He also says: “or blood poured forth” (6:145), which, by the implied meaning of the text, restricts the prohibition to poured-forth blood alone.

Thus, whoever interprets the unqualified in light of the qualified stipulates that the blood must be poured forth for it to be unlawful. Whoever maintains that the unqualified text establishes an additional ruling beyond the qualified text—and that the conflict between them is only through implied meaning, while an unqualified, general text outweighs an implied meaning—gives precedence to the unqualified over the qualified and rules that both a small and a large amount of blood are forbidden.

The “poured-forth” blood whose consumption is prohibited is the blood of a slaughtered animal that gushes out at the moment of slaughter—that is, the blood of an animal whose flesh is lawful to eat. Blood that flows from a living animal is forbidden in any amount, as is the blood of an animal whose flesh is intrinsically unlawful, even if it is slaughtered; there is no disagreement about this.

Their disagreement over fish blood is caused by a clash between a general text and analogy. The general text is His statement “and blood,” whereas the analogy is the possible inference that blood follows the ruling of the animal’s carcass: whatever animal is unlawful as carrion is unlawful in its blood, and whatever animal’s carcass is lawful is lawful in its blood. For that reason he held