and made it an offering to Allah for whoever wished, as a voluntary option rather than an obligation. This is what is meant by his saying, peace and blessings be upon him: “No faraʿ …,” as explained in al-Irwa’ (4/409–413).

1997 — “For the nose, if it is completely severed, the blood-money is one hundred camels; for a hand, fifty; for a leg, fifty; for an āmah, one-third of the blood-money for a life; for a jāʾifah, one-third of the blood-money for a life; for a bone-displacing wound, fifteen; for a bone-exposing wound, five; for a tooth, five; and for every finger or toe, ten.”

Al-Bazzār (no. 1531) and al-Bayhaqī (8/86) narrated it from Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman, from ‘Ikrimah ibn Khālid, from Abū Bakr ibn ‘Ubayd Allah ibn ‘Umar, from his father, from ‘Umar, attributed to the Prophet. Al-Bazzār said: “We know of no narration from ‘Umar except through this chain of transmission.”

I say: It is weak. Muhammad ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman is Ibn Abī Laylā, as al-Bazzār’s narration explicitly states, and he is weak and had a poor memory. However, the hadith has a corroborating report from the hadith of ‘Amr ibn Hazm in his lengthy hadith on blood-money, recorded by al-Nasā’ī (2/252) and others; it is cited in al-Irwa’ (2273). Several of its passages also have separate corroborating reports therein: from Ibn ‘Abbās (2231), Abū Mūsā (2272), ‘Abd Allah ibn ‘Amr (2285), Makhūl in a mursal narration (2296), and Ibn ‘Amr again (2297).

“Completely severed” means that all of it was cut off.

The āmah: Ibn al-Athīr said: In another hadith it is called the maʾmūmah. Both refer to a head wound that reaches the membrane of the head—the skin enclosing the brain.

The jāʾifah is a stab wound that penetrates into a body cavity. What is meant here is any cavity possessing a transformative faculty, such as the abdomen or the brain.