- First comes the woman who is new to menstruation. The moment she sees blood she stops praying for up to fifteen days. If the bleeding ceases within those fifteen, or at any point short of them, the whole duration counts as menstruation and she must not pray during it. Should the flow continue beyond fifteen days, everything past the fifteenth is deemed abnormal bleeding and istiḥāḍa. At the end of the fifteen days she performs the ritual bath, resumes her prayers, and her husband may have marital relations with her; from then on she is treated exactly like any woman in istiḥāḍa. Mālik makes no distinction here between a beginner and a woman whose period days are already known.
This ruling is reported from Mālik by Ibn Wahb and is followed by the majority of the scholars of Medina. Some of them, however, maintain that once the novice has bathed she must make up the prayers missed during those days, except for the minimum number of days in which a woman can be certain she was menstruating, arguing that prayer may only be abandoned with firm certainty; this, they say, is a precaution. The first opinion, nonetheless, is the authoritative position of the school.
There is also a view that if bleeding extends beyond a woman’s usual period she should add three precautionary days; another says she should add only what remains to reach the maximum length of menstruation; yet a third holds that she should not leave the prayer once her normal days have ended, though her husband must still refrain from intercourse until a full fifteen days have passed, no matter how long the bleeding persists.
Ibn al-Qāsim relates from Mālik that a woman with established period days who bleeds past them should add three more days, unless this would take her beyond fifteen. In that case she may not exceed fifteen: she bathes, resumes the prayer, and is henceforth regarded as a woman in istiḥāḍa. Mālik then added that if the woman is a beginner with no established cycle, she should sit for the length of the customary menses of her peers and then add three days, just as the woman with fixed days does.
- The second category is a woman who has recognizable days on which she usually bleeds, yet the number of those days varies—sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. Whenever she sees blood she refrains from prayer