and Ahmad, according to the well-known position transmitted from him. According to another report, blood money may be taken only with the killer’s consent; this is also the position of Abū Hanīfah and Mālik. If retaliation is waived for an intentional killer, he is given one hundred lashes and imprisoned for a year according to Mālik and a group of scholars, though the other scholars do not hold this view.

He was asked about the following verses:

My grandmother is his mother, and my father his grandfather; … I am his paternal aunt, and he my maternal uncle.
Give us your ruling, O Imam—may Allah protect you … and shield you from the misfortunes the nights may bring.

He replied—may Allah have mercy on him:

A man married his son to his daughter’s mother, … and took the daughter in lawful wedlock.
She bore him a daughter, so the poets tell, … who called that woman’s son, “My maternal uncle.”

A man married a woman, and his son married her mother. The man had a daughter, and his son had a son. His daughter is the one addressed in the poem. Her grandmother—her mother’s mother—is the mother of the grandson and the wife of the son. Her father is the grandfather of his son’s son. She is the boy’s paternal aunt, being his father’s half-sister through their father; and he is her maternal uncle, being her mother’s half-brother through their mother. Allah knows best.