Attachment of descent (lahaq), fiqh rulings

Lahaq, in lexicon, is reaching or attaining; a physiognomist attaches a child to its father by saying it is his son from a resemblance he sees; istilhaq is claiming a child, a narrower term ^{1 2}. In law, istilhaq is a man's claim that he is the father of this child ².

The jurists agree that if a husband accuses his free adult wife of adultery, or denies the pregnancy, and takes oaths of mutual curse, the child is not attached to him but to its mother ².

The Shafi'is, the apparent Hanbali view and a Maliki view hold that a woman in her waiting period who bears a child within four years is attached to the husband; the Hanafis and a Hanbali narration hold two years; the settled Maliki view is five years, and Ibn Abd al-Hakam nine months ².

If a man claims a foundling as his, the child is attached to him, with disagreements on whether the claim rests on proof or on acknowledgement alone, on whether the claimant is a Muslim or a dhimmi, and on whether two or more claim the same child ².

The Malikis hold that if a woman becomes pregnant from semen entering her womb without intercourse, as by a bath, the child is attached to her husband if she is married and it is possible: six months or more must have passed since the marriage ³.

The child of an apostate, if conceived in Islam, is a Muslim; so is one conceived when one parent was an apostate and the other a Muslim; if both parents were apostates when it was conceived, the jurists differ ³.

Most jurists hold that a woman whose husband may revoke the divorce is still bound by divorce, zihar and li'an, since revocable divorce does not remove the marriage; al-Ghazali, in a Shafi'i view, held that revocable divorce ends the marriage, and a third view makes the divorce suspended ³.

Abu Hanifa, Abu Sulayman among the Hanafis, al-Istakhri among the Shafi'is and a view of al-Shafi'i and al-Qadi among the Hanbalis hold that the child of a castrated man's wife is attached to him, on the presumption that her womb is occupied by his semen through rubbing, since she has borne a child during the waiting period, out of caution and by juristic preference ^{3 4}. The Shafi'is, on the preferred view and the sounder Hanbali view, hold that a man whose penis and testicles are both cut off cannot be attached, while one with only the testicles removed may be; Malik holds that people of knowledge should be asked ⁴.

The rule is that the common and ordinary is considered, not the rare. Thus a missing person is declared dead after ninety years, puberty is set at fifteen, and the custody periods are seven years for a boy and nine for a girl ⁴. Al-Qarafi and al-Zarkashi list cases where the rare is attached to the common: a child born more than four years after the marriage is attached, though it is rare, since the rare was overridden for the sake of the people's cover; and four kinds, of which some are attached and some not ^{5 6}.

The jurists differ on whether dates on a tree are attached to the sale of the tree, with the detail in the entries on fruit and on sale and price ⁶.