that they are Muslims through their father’s Islam, and this is the view I uphold. Should a Christian die leaving a pregnant wife who then embraces Islam while still pregnant, Mālik holds that the child follows his father and is entitled to his share of the estate.

Mālik and his companions differed concerning an orphan girl who is married before attaining puberty and then either she dies or her husband dies. The best-known report from him is that the two spouses inherit from one another. Another transmission from him—adopted by some of his followers—states that they do not. Those who preferred this latter view argued that Mālik does not approve of such a marriage in the first place, so how could inheritance pass between them? This argument is weak, for Mālik does allow the union to stand if it endures and produces offspring, and in his school any separation would be by the husband’s divorce. Because Mālik’s own statements, those of his companions, and those of earlier and later scholars are at variance, the sounder position in his madhhab is that the spouses do inherit from one another—and Allah knows best.

A newborn neither inherits nor may he be inherited from until, after delivery, he emits a cry and his life is confirmed. The blood money (diyah) for a fetus that its mother miscarries because of another human’s action is distributed among that fetus’s heirs; its detailed rulings appear elsewhere in this book and in other works.

A father who intentionally kills his son does not exclude the rest of his children or their maternal half-siblings from inheriting the murdered son. If the killing was accidental, he does not bar them from the blood money but does bar them from the son’s remaining estate, for he himself is an heir. Some have claimed that he would also exclude the maternal half-brother when a full brother is present, but this is unfounded.

If a man deliberately murders his father, and the deceased father leaves two sons—one of them the killer—then, should the other son pardon him, the killer is not executed for patricide, yet he is deprived of inheritance and receives nothing from his father’s estate because he is a deliberate murderer.

When an heir and a stranger jointly kill their relative by mistake, both become liable for blood money. The heir inherits from the portion collected from the stranger, but he receives nothing of the portion collected from himself.

Anyone who bears even the slightest trace of servitude does not inherit from any of his freeborn children. If a person is half-slave and half-free, has a freeborn child, and then dies