feed the poor for the first Ramadan in any case, provided his delay sprang from negligence. Some have gone so far as to say that he must perform an expiation by feeding sixty needy people, arguing that he is like one who has wilfully broken the fast. A few of Mālik’s associates voiced that opinion, yet it has no sound basis and no precedent among the early scholars.

As for a captive who has lost track of the lunar months: when the matter is finally clarified for him, if it turns out that he fasted the month of Ramadan—intending it specifically—and his fast actually coincided with it, the obligation is discharged. If, however, he fasted after Ramadan had passed or before it began, the fast does not suffice. Should this uncertainty persist for several years, the fast of the first year does not count; and if the month he observed in the second year proves to have been Shaʿbān, he must make up the Ramadan of the first year. In like fashion, each subsequent year’s fast will suffice, but he must still make up the day of ʿEid al-Fiṭr for every month. Even if the prisoner—or anyone else—were to fast, aiming at the month of Ramadan purely on the strength of his own reckoning and intention, such a fast would not fulfil the obligation.