a man standing nearby with a blood-spattered iron bar in his hand.

Yet Mālik holds that the mere discovery of the corpse in a given quarter is not itself lūth, even when hostility exists between the victim’s people and the residents of that quarter. If that is granted, nothing remains that can serve as a foundational basis for making lūth a condition for the obligation of qasāmah; accordingly, no school has adopted this view.

Abū Ḥanīfah and his two companions say: If a slain person is found in a people’s quarter and bears a visible wound, qasāmah becomes obligatory upon the inhabitants of that quarter.

Other scholars impose qasāmah simply because the corpse is discovered in the quarter, without any of the additional conditions stipulated by al-Shāfiʿī, and without the requirement of a wound demanded by Abū Ḥanīfah. This is related from ʿUmar, ʿAlī, and Ibn Masʿūd, and is the view of al-Zuhrī and a group of the Successors.

Ibn Ḥazm likewise holds that qasāmah becomes obligatory whenever a murdered man is found and the killer is unknown, wherever that may be. If the heirs accuse someone, fifty of them must swear fifty oaths: should they swear that the killing was deliberate, qiṣāṣ is carried out; if they swear it was accidental, the diyah is due. In his opinion fewer than fifty heirs may never take the oaths, whereas Mālik allows two or more of them to do so.

Dāwūd says: “I will not rule by qasāmah except in a case identical to the one in which the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—ruled.”

Among the jurists who accept qasāmah, only Mālik and al-Layth consider the dying victim’s own statement—“So-and-so killed me”—to be lūth sufficient to trigger qasāmah. Each scholar followed what he deemed the strongest suspicion, and, because of that suspicion, those who held this view began with the claimants’ oaths. For Mālik, suspicion transfers the oath from defendant to claimant, since the Law originally assigns the oath to the defendant only because of the strong presumption against him in what he denies—an analogy, he says, to the oath plus a single witness in financial cases.

The claim that the mere act of accusing is itself a suspicion is weak and contrary to both legal principles and explicit text, for the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said: “If people were granted all they claim, some would claim the lives and property of others; rather, the oath is upon the defendant.” This authentic ḥadīth is related from Ibn ʿAbbās and recorded by Muslim in his Ṣaḥīḥ. The Mālikīs’ attempt to reason from the story of the Cow of the Children of Israel is likewise unsound, for verification there rested on a miraculous event beyond ordinary experience.

Those who allow qiṣāṣ through qasāmah disagree whether more than one person may be executed on its basis. Mālik says qasāmah can be directed only against a single individual, and Aḥmad ibn Ḥanbal concurs. Ashhab maintains that the oaths may concern a group but that only one individual—chosen by the heirs—is executed; this opinion is weak. Al-Mughīrah al-Makhzūmī holds that everyone against whom the oaths are sworn is to be put to death.

Mālik and al-Layth further state: If two upright witnesses testify that a man struck another, the victim survives several days and then dies, the heirs swear that the death resulted from that blow and retaliation is exacted. All of this, however, is weak.