On this issue Mālik said, “Allah has granted this community ample scope through ijtihād (independent reasoning).”

In the transmission of Ibn Wahb it is reported that testimony founded on what people have heard remains operative when a woman claims that her husband beats her—provided that both men and women have heard of the abuse through a publicly circulating report. If only women, and not the men, have heard of it, the report is not deemed widespread.

The same principle applies to a statement that the clan of so-and-so has no share in the endowment of so-and-so, and to claims of ancient ownership. Consider the case of a man who holds a house long known to belong to him and to his forefathers. Another man brings witnesses who testify that the house was his property in former times. The current possessor then produces witnesses who, on the strength of widespread hearing, declare, “We have always heard that its ownership passed to the present holder—or to his fathers—by purchase, donation, or some other lawful transfer.” According to Mālik and his colleagues, this testimony entitles the house to the one who presently possesses it, not to the person whose witnesses assert an ancient title. In such matters the testimony of hearing is admissible for the present holder, who has retained the property over a long period; the witnesses add that they have continually heard that it was transferred from the claimant, his fathers, and his grandfathers to the father, grandfather, or great-grandfather of the current possessor by one of the recognised means by which property changes hands.

Mālik held that testimony based solely on hearing is not acceptable with respect to ownership of a house when only five years have elapsed. Ibn al-Qāsim maintained that it is admissible only after forty or fifty years.

If two men hear two other men state that a named individual confessed before them to owing a right to someone else and had called them to witness against himself, the two listeners may not testify to what the informants said unless those informants themselves appoint them as witnesses to their testimony.

There is a divergence in the reports from Mālik about a man who hears another man acknowledge a right to a third person without formally making him a witness. On one occasion Mālik said that the listener is to convey what he heard if the beneficiary of the acknowledgment asks him to do so.