when such wording is not in wide circulation.

The only circumstance that shields the slanderer from the prescribed ḥadd is that the accused person’s act of fornication be proven by four eyewitnesses—this is a point of unanimous agreement. Mālik maintains that if the witnesses are fewer than four, they themselves become slanderers, whereas the other jurists do not deem them so.

The disagreement concerns the second-tier witnesses who testify that the primary witnesses have delivered their testimony. Must the report of each original witness be transmitted by the same number of witnesses as the original four, or is it sufficient—just as in all matters other than slander—to have two, provided that this second tier would not, by its own number, be enough to carry the testimony?

As for the ḥadd itself, it must be considered from three angles: its kind, its timing, and the factors that nullify it.

1. Its kind. There is consensus that a free person who utters slander is to be flogged eighty lashes, in accordance with the Almighty’s words:

   “eighty lashes” (al-Nūr 24:4).

They differ, however, about a slave who slanders a free person. The majority of jurists in the provincial centers say his punishment is half that of a free man, namely forty lashes—a view reported from the four Rightly Guided Caliphs and from Ibn ʿAbbās. Another group holds that his punishment equals that of a free man. Among the Companions this view was taken by Ibn Masʿūd, and among the successors by ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz; it is also the position of several city-jurists such as Abū Thawr, al-Awzāʿī, Dāwūd, and the other Ẓāhirīs.

The majority reason by analogy, treating the slave’s penalty for slander like his penalty for fornication. The Ẓāhirīs, by contrast, cling to the general wording of the verse; and since the scholars likewise agree that the punishment for a scriptural non-Muslim is eighty lashes, they argue that the slave is all the more deserving of the same.

2. Its timing. All agree that if someone slanders one and the same individual many times yet has not been punished for any of those utterances, only a single ḥadd is due. If he slanders, is punished, and then slanders again, a second ḥadd becomes obligatory.

They differ when he slanders several people. One group holds that only one ḥadd is incurred whether he combines them in one allegation or separates them—this is the view of Mālik, Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Thawrī, Aḥmad, and others. A second group maintains that a separate ḥadd is due for each person; this is the opinion of al-Shāfiʿī, al-Layth, and others. It is even related from al-Ḥasan ibn Ḥayy that he said: “If someone declares, ‘Whoever enters this house is an adulterer,’ he is to be flogged the ḥadd for every person who enters it.”

A third group distinguishes: if he addresses them with a single phrase—such as saying, “You fornicators!”—one ḥadd suffices. But if he addresses each individual—saying to each, “You fornicator!”—then a separate ḥadd is due for every person.

Those who impose only one ḥadd on the slanderer of a group cite the ḥadīth reported by Anas and others: “Hilāl ibn Umayyah accused his wife of adultery with Sharīk ibn Sahmāʾ, and the case was brought before the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, who instituted mutual imprecation (liʿān) between them,” yet he did not flog Hilāl on Sharīk’s account. The scholars are unanimously agreed on this ruling when a man accuses his own wife of adultery with another man.

Those who require a ḥadd for every person argue that the penalty is a right belonging to human beings; therefore, if some waive it while others do not, the ḥadd is not lifted. As for those who differentiate between slandering them in a single utterance or in several, or in one gathering or in multiple gatherings—