retaliation is dropped. The ensuing question is whether the heirs who remain may still take the oaths and claim their respective portions of the blood money. Another view is that neither retaliation nor diyah is due at all, and the oaths revert to the defendants.

If the murdered person has only a single heir who is legally entitled to pardon and there are other heirs of a different rank, that lone heir may choose whichever of them he wishes to join him in the oaths—provided each is certain of what he is swearing to—and in that case retaliation becomes due. Should an heir who may not lawfully pardon refuse to swear with the heir who may pardon, yet a more distant relative is willing, the more remote heir may swear alongside the nearer one who can pardon, and the intermediate heir is bypassed.

However, if an heir who possesses the right of pardon either refuses to swear or actually pardons, the path to retaliation is blocked and the oaths are returned to the defendants. The same applies when the heir finds no one to swear with him: the oaths go back to the accused. Once the oaths revert to them, each defendant must swear fifty oaths on his own behalf to be exonerated; fewer than fifty will not suffice. If they decline, their refusal does not clear them. They are held until they swear and are acquitted; if their detention drags on, they are released, flogged one hundred lashes each, and imprisoned for a full year.

This procedure of qasāmah pertains exclusively to the case of a free Muslim who is killed, whether the killer is a free Muslim, a slave, or a dhimmī. Qasāmah is invoked only for free Muslim men and women, and only in matters of homicide, not bodily injury. There is no qasāmah for a male or female slave, a dhimmī, or any non-Muslim.

If the heirs of a free Muslim victim swear fifty oaths regarding a slave who committed the murder and choose to spare him, that choice is theirs. But if they say, “We will spare him and take only a single oath,” that is not permissible, for what they are entitled to is the life of their relative. Should they keep him alive and his owner seeks to reclaim him from their hands