Section on Breast-Feeding and the Resulting Prohibitions

Breast-feeding renders unlawful whatever birth renders unlawful. Thus, anyone whom a man is forbidden to marry or have intercourse with by reason of birth becomes equally forbidden through breast-feeding. Every woman whose marriage or intercourse is prohibited to a man on account of lineage, womb relationship, or marital affinity is likewise prohibited to him by the corresponding tie of breast-feeding. The same applies to combining two milk-sisters in one marriage, or a woman together with her paternal or maternal aunt through breast-feeding. The wife of one’s milk-son is like the wife of one’s natural son, and a father’s wives by breast-feeding—including any slave woman with whom he has had relations by right-hand ownership—are as strictly forbidden as the father’s wives by lineage. Conversely, any woman who is not forbidden to a man by blood or affinity is not made forbidden to him by breast-feeding.

If a child suckles from a woman even the least amount, it becomes unlawful for him to marry any of her daughters, whether she nursed him together with them or before them. There is, however, no objection to his brother marrying one of those daughters, for no milk-relationship exists between them. Likewise, if a woman nurses a girl, none of her sons may marry that girl, yet any of them may lawfully marry the girl’s sister, because no milk-relationship exists between them.

If a woman nurses a boy while she already has a daughter, the boy’s father may marry that daughter—even though she is his son’s milk-sister—because no milk-relationship exists between the father and her. Should a grandmother nurse her daughter’s daughter, that girl may not marry her maternal cousin, for she thereby becomes the cousin’s mother’s milk-sister.

If two brothers have children—one a boy and the other a girl—and their mother, the children’s grandmother, nurses either child, the boy and the girl may not marry one another. By breast-feeding they become the children of milk-brothers, even though by lineage they are first cousins.

A woman may travel with her maḥram relatives by breast-feeding just as she may travel with her maḥram relatives by blood.

Every quantity of milk that reaches the stomach of a boy or girl during the first two years