—and she then gives birth to a child no sooner than six months from the day of the contract and no later than the utmost period for which women may carry. According to Mālik and a group of the scholars of Madinah this maximum is five years; others say four years, while some of Mālik’s own companions extend the attribution of a child to six, even seven, years. The first opinion is the distilled position of his school and, God willing, it is the correct one. Thus, if she delivers within five years, the child is affiliated to the husband whether or not he admits to having had intercourse with her; he can disown the child only through liʿān.
When a woman gives birth and the husband denies that she delivered the child, claiming instead that she merely picked it up as a foundling, her word prevails and she need not produce proof of having borne it—unlike the case of a slave-girl. Yet if the husband brings evidence that she did not give birth to it, the child is disavowed from him.
Once both parties have completed the rites of liʿān they part company, each leaving the congregational mosque by a door different from the one used by the other. Should they depart through the same door, their liʿān remains valid. Liʿān is to be conducted only in a congregational mosque and in the presence of the ruler or a judge acting in his stead. The moment the oaths are concluded, a permanent separation takes effect: they may never reunite, they do not inherit from one another, and it is forever unlawful for him to take her back—whether before or after she marries someone else.
If, after liʿān is finalized, the husband declares himself a liar, he is flogged with the prescribed punishment, the child is affiliated to him, he can never again have access to her, and no inheritance passes between them, whether death occurs during her waiting period or after it expires. If he recants before the woman completes her oaths, he is still flogged, the child is joined to him, and the marriage remains in force.
Should either spouse die before both have finished their liʿān, they inherit from one another. The separation brought about by liʿān is an annulment, not a divorce, and does not require a judicial pronouncement.
If the man completes his oaths and the woman dies before uttering hers, his liʿān spares him the prescribed punishment and he remains entitled to her estate. Even if he had accused her and she died before