If the bleeding becomes continuous, she counts her waiting period by the same number of days as her normal menses when she was healthy.

Mālik obliges her to complete a full year because he treats her as one who does not menstruate, even though she belongs to the class of women who ordinarily do. Al-Shāfiʿī, by contrast, holds that a woman who knows the length of her usual period should act on that knowledge, by analogy with the rulings on prayer, for the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said to the woman with chronic bleeding:

“Leave off the prayer during the days of your periods; when their usual duration has passed, wash the blood away.”

He likewise relied on the principle of distinguishing between the two kinds of blood, on the strength of the Prophet’s words to Fāṭimah bint Ḥubaysh:

“When it is menstrual blood, it is dark and recognisable; when that appears, refrain from prayer. When the other blood appears, perform ablution and pray, for it is only a vein.”

This report is related by Abū Dāwūd.

Those who reckon her ʿiddah by months whenever the two kinds of blood become confused reason that, as a rule, a woman menstruates once each month, and God has prescribed a months-based ʿiddah whenever menstruation ceases or is hidden, just as when it disappears altogether.

As for the mustaraba—that is, a woman who feels a movement in her belly and suspects pregnancy—she waits for the longest presumptive term of pregnancy. Within the Mālikī school some put this at four years, others at five, whereas the Ẓāhirīs say nine months. All agree that the ʿiddah of pregnant women—meaning the divorced—ends with delivery, in accord with the Almighty’s words:

“As for pregnant women, their term is when they lay down their burden” (al-Ṭalāq 65:4).

Wives who are not free women fall into the same categories—menstruating, post-menopausal, mustahadah, and those whose menses have ceased for no apparent reason.

For menstruating slave-women whose periods come regularly, the majority hold that their ʿiddah is two cycles. Dāwūd and the Ẓāhirīs set it at three cycles, like a free woman; Ibn Sīrīn agreed. The Ẓāhirīs rely on the general verse:

“Divorced women shall wait concerning themselves for three quruʾ” (al-Baqarah 2:228),

and the term “divorced women” certainly includes them. The majority, however, restrict that generality through an analogy of resemblance: since divorce and legal penalties are halved for a slave, they fixed her waiting period at two cycles, because a single menstrual cycle cannot itself be halved.

As for a slave-woman who is post-menopausal or pre-pubescent, Mālik and most scholars of Madīnah say her ʿiddah is three months. Al-Shāfiʿī, Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Thawrī, Abū Thawr and others set it at one and a half months—half the waiting period of a free woman—which follows analogy if one allows the general text to be qualified. Mālik’s position thus appears unsettled: in the case of post-menopausal women he acts on the general text, whereas with menstruating women he resorts to analogy, even though the analogy is identical in both instances.

For the slave-woman whose menses cease without cause, the ruling is the same as for a free woman, along with the same disagreement; the same applies to the mustahadah. All concur that a woman divorced before consummation has no waiting period.

They differ, however, about a husband who takes his wife back during the ʿiddah of a revocable divorce and then separates from her again before intercourse: must she begin a new ʿiddah or not? The majority of jurists across the regions say that she must; another group says that she remains in her original waiting period from—