ʿAbd al-Raḥmān asked, “How much compensation is due for four of her fingers?”
He replied, “Twenty.”
I said, “So when her wound becomes graver and her affliction more severe, her diyah is reduced?!”
He responded, “Are you a Bedouin?”
I said, “No; I am either a scholar who proceeds with care, or an ignorant man who is learning.”
He answered, “That is the Sunnah.”
A mursal report to the same effect is also related from the Prophet—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—through ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb from his father, and through ʿIkrimah.
Some scholars hold that when a Companion’s statement contradicts analogy, it must nonetheless be followed, for he would not have departed from analogy except on the basis of direct instruction. This reasoning, however, is weak, for the Companion may have rejected analogy altogether, or a second analogy may have opposed the first, or he may simply have followed someone else.
Such, then, is the ruling concerning the diyāt for the wounds of free persons and the injuries to their limbs—male and female alike.
With regard to the wounds of slaves and the severing of their limbs, the scholars hold two views:
- One group maintains that the liability is the amount by which the slave’s market price is diminished.
- The other group holds that what is obligatory is a portion of the slave’s value equivalent to the diyah for the same injury in a free person; thus a muḍiḥah entails one-twentieth of his value, and loss of an eye one-half. This is the view of Abū Ḥanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī, and is also reported from ʿUmar and ʿAlī.
Mālik said: In every case one assesses the actual depreciation in the slave’s price, except for a muḍiḥah, a munqillah, and a maʾmūmah, for these claim from his value the same proportion they carry in the diyah of a free person.
The first party’s main evidence is analogy with merchandise, whereas the second party draws an analogy with a free person, for the slave is a Muslim and legally accountable.
All agree that if the compensation for accidental injury exceeds one-third of the full diyah, whatever is beyond one-third is borne by the ʿāqilah. They differed, however, over amounts below that:
• Mālik, the Seven Jurists of Madīnah, and others said: the ʿāqilah is liable only for one-third and anything above it.
• Abū Ḥanīfah said: it is liable for one-tenth and anything above it up to the full diyah.
• Al-Thawrī and Ibn Shubrumah said: the muḍiḥah and anything greater is on the ʿāqilah.
• Al-Shāfiʿī and ʿUthmān al-Battī said: the ʿāqilah bears both the minor and the major portions of the diyah for accidental injury.
Al-Shāfiʿī’s principal proof is that the basic rule is for the ʿāqilah to bear the diyah of accidental homicide; whoever claims an exception must provide evidence. The earlier group have no proof beyond established practice and widespread acceptance.
Here the book comes to an end. All praise belongs to Allah—praise that is truly His due.