So they took their dispute to the Prophet ﷺ.
The biter demanded the diyah for his two fallen incisors, while the man who had been bitten defended himself by saying that he had only been trying to rescue his hand from the other’s teeth.
The Prophet ﷺ rebuked the claimant—the biter—saying in effect: How can one of you maul his brother like a brute beast, then come afterwards to claim compensation for the very teeth that committed the wrongdoing? You have no diyah; the one who started the attack is the aggressor.
Points derived from the hadith
- If a person bites someone’s hand and that person pulls it free, causing some or all of the biter’s teeth to fall out, there is neither qiṣāṣ (legal retaliation) nor diyah.
- This ruling is general: whenever a human being or an animal launches an unprovoked assault and the victim defends his own life, honor, household, or property—injuring or even killing the assailant—he incurs no liability. He is safeguarding what he is obliged to protect, while the attacker is the wrongful aggressor. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Whoever is killed defending his life is a martyr, and whoever is killed defending his family is a martyr.”
- The scholars have qualified this ruling, stating that one must repel an assailant with the least force necessary, escalating only when required. They explain that this restriction is drawn from the broad, overarching principles of the Sacred Law.
Hadith 10
Al-Hasan ibn Abī al-Hasan al-Baṣrī narrated: “Jundub told us in this very mosque⦗1⦘, and we have forgotten none of what he related, nor do we fear that Jundub would ever attribute a lie to the Messenger of Allah ﷺ. He said that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said:
‘Among those who came before you there was a man who had a wound. He lost patience with it, so he took a knife and cut his hand. The bleeding did not stop until he died. Allah, Mighty and Majestic, said, “My servant has forestalled My decree by taking his own life; I have therefore forbidden Paradise to him.”’
Unfamiliar terms
Jundub—spelled with a jīm, a nūn in sukun, the dāl pronounced with either a ḍamma or a fatḥa, followed by a bāʾ—is Jundub ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Bajalī, from the tribe of Bajīlah. Al-Jawharī said that they are an Adnānī tribe whose present homeland lies between Mecca and Medina.