has understood and learned. This is the precise limit of the required training—nothing further is demanded—and the animal’s abstaining from eating is not a condition. In this matter the goshawk and the dog stand on an equal footing.
If a trained animal takes game without having been sent, the quarry may not be eaten unless the hunter reaches it and performs the ritual slaughter (dhakāh).
Whatever a person employs for hunting—any weapon whatsoever, such as swords, arrows, spears, or any implement with a cutting edge of iron or other material—so long as it is sharp and can penetrate to the vital organs, the act of slaughter is effected by it wherever it strikes the quarry, provided it hits a vital spot and the hunter pronounces the name of Allah when releasing it. Anything that dies from the blow of an arrow or any other weapon is lawful to eat, for striking with a weapon or loosing an arrow that pierces the vital organs is equivalent to the slaughterer’s direct act of slaughter. All of this concerns wild, untamed animals that cannot be subdued.
As for game that one is able to seize and restrain, its ruling has already been set out in the chapter on slaughtered animals. Nothing caught by a snare (ḥabālah), trap (fakhkh), net (sharak), or pellet bow (bunduqiyyah) may be eaten unless one reaches the animal in time to perform its slaughter. A stone is like the pellet: if it merely crushes and smashes, the game is unlawful; but if it has an edge, wounds with that edge, and kills, then what it kills is lawful to eat.
Likewise, anything struck by a mi‘rāḍ—an arrow whose broad side, not its point, hits the target—may not be eaten unless the slaughter is carried out. Whoever forgets to pronounce the basmala when releasing the animal or weapon is in the same position as one who forgets it at slaughter; and whoever omits it deliberately is treated like one who deliberately omits it when slaughtering, as has already been mentioned in the chapter on slaughter.
Whoever’s hand-slaughtered meat we are permitted to eat, we may also eat his game taken with a beast of prey or with a weapon. The game of one whose slaughtered meat is unlawful for us remains unlawful—except when we ourselves reach the animal in time to perform the ritual slaughter.