He was asked—may Allah have mercy on him—about the following verses:

“What of a people who, when one of their number had died, … began dividing the wealth and robes?
A woman, not of their kin, said: … ‘Shall I tell you of a wondrous case?
Within my womb is a child who will ever thank you; … delay the division until you know what I bear.
If it is a boy, he receives not a mustard seed; … but if instead a girl, she is entitled
To half, truly and certainly—a right denied by none … who knows Allah’s prescribed shares without error.
I have told you my case without falsehood; … I speak neither in ignorance nor merely in parables.’”

The Answer

He replied:

There are a husband, a mother, two maternal half-siblings, and an unborn child of the deceased’s father. The pregnant woman is not the deceased’s mother, but her father’s wife. The husband receives one-half, the mother one-sixth, and the maternal half-siblings one-third. If the unborn child is male, he is a paternal half-brother and receives nothing, by scholarly consensus. If the unborn child is female, she is a paternal half-sister and is allotted one-half, in addition to the other prescribed shares. The calculation therefore has an original denominator of six, increased to nine.

If, however, the unborn child is being carried by the deceased’s mother, the answer remains the same according to one of the two scholarly opinions held by the Companions and those who followed them. This is the position of Abū Hanīfah and the well-known position transmitted from Ahmad. According to the other opinion, if the unborn child is male, he shares with the maternal half-siblings as one of them and is not excluded from inheritance. This is the position of Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī, and one report from Ahmad.