having intercourse with them, and He revealed concerning this:

“And married women, except those whom your right hands possess.”

The report also states that the time for intercourse with them is when their waiting period has ended. It is reported that the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, said concerning the captives of Awtās:

“A pregnant woman must not be approached sexually until she gives birth, nor a woman who is not pregnant until her freedom from pregnancy has been established.”

Another narration reads: “until she has menstruated once.”

Scholars generally require only one menstrual period to establish freedom from pregnancy in this case. Yet this is a waiting period following intercourse with a husband to whom the child’s lineage is attributed and whose intercourse has a legally protected status, even if he is an unbeliever at war with the Muslims. His being at war permits his killing, the seizure of his property and the enslavement of his wife—subject to scholarly disagreement and detailed qualifications. Nevertheless, there is no disagreement that his child’s lineage is established through him and that his semen has a legally protected status. By Muslim consensus, no one may have intercourse with his wife before her freedom from pregnancy has been established.

Indeed, the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, cursed anyone who did so, as related in the authentic hadith in Muslim:

“He came upon a woman near childbirth at the entrance to a tent and said, ‘Perhaps her master is having intercourse with her?’ They replied, ‘Yes.’ He said, ‘I have almost resolved to curse him with a curse that would accompany him into his grave. How can he make the child his heir when that is not lawful for him? How can he enslave the child when that is not lawful for him?’”

He also “forbade a man to water another man’s crop with his own semen.”

However, this woman’s husband did not part with her of his own choice, whether through divorce or otherwise. Rather, her enslavement transferred his right over her to the one who enslaved her, or confusion of her husband with another man extinguished that right. Thus, it is clear that this is not a marriage that has ended for a woman, for that entails a waiting period of three cycles. If an unbeliever and his wife were to bring a dispute concerning the waiting period before us, and he then divorced his wife