the well-known position reported from Mālik.

It is also related that if an obstacle prevents the sacrifice on the first seventh day, it may be performed on the next seventh. For both a boy and a girl one sheep is sufficient; in Mālik’s estimation they are equal in this respect. Still, offering two sheep for a boy and one for a girl is praiseworthy, and it makes no difference whether the sheep itself is male or female.

Shaving the newborn’s head and giving charity in silver or gold equal to the weight of the shorn hair is a good deed for someone who cannot manage the ʿaqīqa, yet it is neither obligatory nor an established sunnah.

The ʿaqīqa animal should be slaughtered in the early part of the day. If it is slaughtered at night, the act resembles slaughtering the Eid sacrifice at night; Ibn al-Qāsim and others deem it disliked but valid.

The same defects that invalidate the Eid sacrifice must be avoided here. It is recommended to eat from the meat and to feed others, and there is no harm in breaking its bones. The child is not to be smeared with any of its blood.

The proper course is to send portions—raw and cooked—to the neighbors, cooked meat being better than raw. Neither this meat nor that of the Eid sacrifices is to be offered to an unbeliever. Should one invite people to partake of it without ostentation, there is no objection.