Issue Two
Mālik and his colleagues maintained that when a woman’s menses are intermittent—she bleeds for a day or two and is then pure for a day or two—she should combine all the days on which blood appears, disregarding the intervening days of purity. Each time she first sees the trace of purity she must perform the ritual bath and pray, for she cannot be sure that this is not genuine purity. When the accumulated bleeding reaches fifteen days she is deemed to be experiencing istiḥāḍah. Al-Shāfiʿī adopted the same view. A second report from Mālik says that she should collect the bleeding days and compare the sum to the length of her normal habit; if they coincide, she adds a three-day precautionary period. Should the blood cease, well and good; if not, she is treated as a mustaḥāḍah.

To discount the days on which no blood is seen makes no sense, for those days can only be either menstruation or purity. If they are menstruation, they must be added to the bleeding days; if they are purity, then the bleeding days should not be joined together at all, since a period of purity has intervened. Consistent with Mālik’s own principles, those days are to be regarded as menstruation, not purity, because he sets a minimum interval for purity—and it is longer than one or two days. Reflect on this, for it is clear, God willing.

In truth, both menstrual and post-partum blood may flow and then stop for a day or two before returning, until the days of menstruation or nifās are complete; just as it can flow for only an hour or two of the day and then cease.

Issue Three
The jurists disagreed about the minimum and maximum duration of nifās. Mālik held—and al-Shāfiʿī concurred—that there is no minimum. Abū Ḥanīfah and others, however, set a limit. Abū Ḥanīfah said the minimum is twenty-five days; his disciple Abū Yūsuf put it at eleven days; and al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī held it to be twenty days. As for the maximum, Mālik once said sixty days but later retracted, saying the matter should be referred to women themselves. His followers, together with al-Shāfiʿī, remained committed to the first view. The majority of the Companions, and Abū Ḥanīfah as well, maintained that the maximum is forty days.

Some have said that a woman should follow the pattern typical of women similar to her; if she exceeds that, her bleeding is istiḥāḍah. Others distinguish between the birth of a male and of a female child, assigning thirty days in the case of a boy and forty in the case of a girl.

The root of the disagreement lies in the difficulty of establishing the matter empirically, given the wide variation among women, and in the absence of any explicit Sunnah to follow—just as with the differences of opinion concerning the lengths of menstruation and purity.

Issue Four
The earlier and later jurists also disputed whether the blood seen by a pregnant woman is menstruation or istiḥāḍah. Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī in his soundest opinion, and others held that a pregnant woman can indeed menstruate, whereas Abū