Blood money (diyah)

Abu al-Malih said: I heard from my father - and he was a Companion of the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) - he said: There were two women (in our tribe); one of them struck the other with a piece of wood (a tent pole), so that she died, and what was in her womb (the child) also died. So the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) ruled blood money (diyah) for the (slain) woman, and for the fetus a ghurrah: a male slave, or a female slave, or a horse, or two camels, or such-and-such a number of sheep. Then a man from the clan of the woman who had killed said: "O Messenger of Allah! How are we to pay blood money for (a child) who neither ate, nor drank, nor cried out, nor screamed? The death of such (a child) goes unrequited." The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Are you speaking in rhymed prose?" And the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) ruled that the woman's inheritance is for her husband and her children, and that the blood money is due from the 'asabah (paternal kinsmen) of the woman who killed.

Sayyiduna Usamah (may Allah be pleased with him) said: There was a man among us called Hamal bin Malik, who had two wives, one from the tribe of Hudhayl and the other from the tribe of Amir. The Hudhali woman struck the Amiri woman on her belly with a tent pole, causing her to miscarry, and the child was born dead. So the woman who had struck was taken to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him), and with her was her brother, who was called Imran bin Uwaymir. When they related the whole incident before the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him), he said: "Pay him (the blood money)." Imran said: "O Prophet of Allah! Are we to pay blood money for (a child) who neither ate, nor drank, nor cried out, nor screamed? The death of such (a child) goes unrequited." The Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) said: "Spare me the rhymed verse of the Bedouins. In it is a ghurrah (due): a male slave or a female slave, or five hundred (dirhams), or a horse, or one hundred and twenty sheep." He said: "O Prophet of Allah! She (the woman who struck) has two sons who are the chiefs of the tribe; they are more entitled to pay the blood money on behalf of their mother." He said: "You are more entitled than her sons to pay the blood money on behalf of your sister." He said: "I have nothing with which to pay the blood money." He said: "O Hamal bin Malik" - and he was at that time in charge of the charities (sadaqat) of (the tribe of) Hudhayl, and he was the husband of both women and the father of the slain child - "take one hundred and twenty sheep from the charities of Hudhayl that are in your keeping." So he did so.

A similar hadith is also narrated from Sayyiduna Usamah (may Allah be pleased with him).