The reason for their divergence is the conflict between the transmitted reports on the matter. Two ḥadīths address it:
- The ḥadīth of Sālim already mentioned.
- The ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah, recorded by al-Bukhārī and Muslim. She related:
“The Messenger of God—may God bless him and grant him peace—entered while a man was with me. That distressed him, and I saw anger in his face. I said, ‘O Messenger of God, he is my brother through nursing.’ He replied, ‘Determine who your brothers through nursing are, for nursing is only because of hunger.’”
Whoever gives precedence to this report says that milk which does not provide the nursling with actual nourishment does not establish the prohibition. As for the ḥadīth of Sālim, it concerned a specific individual, and the rest of the Prophet’s wives—peace be upon him—regarded it as a concession granted solely to Sālim. Conversely, whoever prefers the ḥadīth of Sālim and dismisses the report of ʿĀʾishah—on the grounds that she herself did not act upon it—maintains that the suckling of an adult does create the prohibition.
Issue Three
The jurists also disagreed about a child who, having become independent of milk before completing two lunar years and having been weaned, is subsequently nursed by a woman. Mālik held that such nursing does not render marriage unlawful, whereas Abū Ḥanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī maintained that it does.
The root of their disagreement lies in their understanding of the Prophet’s statement, “Nursing is only because of hunger.” It may be taken to refer to nursing that occurs during the “age of hunger”—that is, the general age of suckling, regardless of whether the child has been weaned. It may also be understood to mean that nursing is only so long as the child has not been weaned; if weaning occurs at any time within the two years, subsequent nursing is no longer “because of hunger.” The issue, therefore, is whether the nursing prompted by hunger and the need for milk is defined by the natural dependence common to all infants—dependence created by the age of suckling—or by the individual need of the particular child, which ends with weaning even though it arises naturally.
Those who hold that nursing during the suckling period has a prohibitive effect—whether or not they stipulate that the child still be unweaned—differ over the length of that period. One opinion fixes it at exactly two full years; this was the view of Zufar. Mālik considered the prohibition to extend slightly beyond two years; one report from him allows an additional month, another up to three months. Abū Ḥanīfah set the limit at two years and six months.
The cause of this divergence is the apparent tension between the Qur’anic verse on nursing and the previously cited ḥadīth of ʿĀʾishah. The Almighty says,
“Mothers shall nurse their children for two full years” (al-Baqarah 2:233),
which seems to imply that anything beyond those two years is not nursing prompted by hunger. Yet the Prophet’s statement, “Nursing is only because of hunger,” in its general wording indicates that as long as the child’s sustenance is milk, such nursing renders marriage unlawful.