Unfamiliar Terms
• Janin (fetus): taken from ijtinān, “to be concealed.”
• ʿĀqilatuhā (her ʿāqilah): the agnate male relatives who pay the blood-money for an accidental killing committed by one of their kin.
They are called ʿāqilah (“restrainers”) because they shield the killer; ʿaql here conveys the sense of prevention.
• Ḥamal: pronounced with an open ḥāʾ and an unstressed open mīm; he is the son of Mālik ibn al-Nābighah.
• “Nor did it cry”: istihlāl means to raise the voice—that is, no cry or sound indicated that the infant had lived.
• Yuṭall: with ḍamma on the yāʾ, fatḥa on the ṭāʾ, and a doubled lām; it means “to be rendered void and of no effect.”
Another reading has bi-ṭāʾ (buṭila, “was rendered void”) as a past-tense verb derived from buṭlān (“nullity”).
Qāḍī ʿIyāḍ said this is the version carried by the majority in Ṣaḥīḥ Muslim, whereas al-Nawawī noted that most Levantine manuscripts have the form with the yāʾ.
• Sajʿ (rhymed prose): arranging prose into clauses that end with similar cadences, like poetic rhyme.
The censured kind is that which is contrived or used to champion falsehood and suppress truth; otherwise, such rhythm is found in Prophetic speech.
Overall Meaning
Two co-wives from the tribe of Hudhayl quarreled. One hurled a small stone—ordinarily not fatal—at the other, yet it killed her and the fetus in her womb.
The Prophet ﷺ ruled that the diyah for the fetus is a ghurra: one male or female slave, whether the fetus itself was male or female, and that this payment is borne by the woman who threw the stone.
He also awarded a full diyah for the slain woman, classifying her death as quasi-intentional killing (shibh ʿamd). The liability rests on the woman’s ʿāqilah because the system of ʿaqilah is built on mutual support and because the act was not outright premeditated murder.
Since the diyah becomes part of the deceased woman’s estate, it is inherited by her children and the other heirs; the ʿāqilah receive nothing of it.
Ḥamal ibn al-Nābighah—the killer’s father—objected: “Messenger of Allah, how can we pay blood-money for one who was expelled lifeless, who neither ate nor drank, who uttered no sound by which his life could be known?” He voiced his protest in florid, rhymed prose.
The Prophet ﷺ disliked his remark because it sought to undermine the divine ruling through contrived rhymes resembling those of the soothsayers, who consume people’s wealth unjustly by such means.
Lessons Drawn from the Hadith
- This hadith establishes the third category of homicide: quasi-intentional killing (shibh ʿamd). It occurs when the offender deliberately strikes the victim with something that does not normally kill, such as a small stone or a light stick. The ruling is that an aggravated diyah is imposed upon the killer, but he is not put to death.