Muwatta, Book of Breastfeeding (radaa)

The Book of Suckling (Radaa) is the sixteenth book of the Muwatta in the transmission of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi from Malik ibn Anas, in the edition of Bashshar Awwad Ma'ruf (1997), in the second volume. It occupies pages 119 to 128 in the PDF pagination, and contains 19 numbered texts (1762–1780) in three chapters. It concerns suckling and what it makes unlawful in marriage, the limit of two years, the suckling of an adult, and the ghila (nursing while the husband has intercourse). ^{1 2}

• Suckling of the young child (1762–1774): suckling makes unlawful what birth makes unlawful; Aisha permitted those whom her sisters and nieces had nursed to enter her house; suckling within the two years, whether little or much, creates the bond, and what comes after them is only food. ^{1 3}
• Suckling after adulthood (1775–1777): the story of Salim, freed slave of Abu Hudhayfa (may God be pleased with him), and Sahla bint Suhayl (may God be pleased with her); Umar's ruling on a woman who nursed her husband's slave girl; and the sayings of Ibn Masud and Abu Musa on the two years. ^{3 4}
• Collected reports on suckling (1778–1780): the prohibition through suckling as through birth; the hadith on the ghila; and the hadith of ten sucklings, then five. ^{4 2}

Malik rules by the two years, holds that what comes after them is food that does not make unlawful, and says of the ghila that it is when a man has intercourse with his wife while she is nursing. Of the hadith of ten sucklings he says that the practice does not follow it. ^{3 5 2}

The editor points out that the words "and from Urwa" in the chain of the suckling hadith are an error in Yahya's version, and that the correct form is Sulayman ibn Yasar from Urwa, following Ibn Abd al-Barr. He explains the oddity of the hadith of ten sucklings from Malik, and prefers the transmission of Yahya ibn Sa'id al-Ansari and al-Qasim ibn Muhammad from Amra. ^{4 2}

Each text of the book has its own record. It names the highest narrator and the chapter, gives the substance of the report in the museum's own wording, and records the editor's takhrij where it is needed. See Suckling for the places where its rulings appear in the book. ¹