Muwatta, Book of blood-money (uqul)

The Book of Blood-money (Uqul) is the twenty-ninth 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 417 to 449 in the PDF pagination, and contains 115 numbered texts (2458–2572) in twenty-four chapters. It concerns blood-money and its assessment for a life, for limbs and for injuries, the kinsmen who bear the blood-money and what they carry, retaliation between free persons and slaves, and the blood-money of the protected people. ^{1 2}

• Mention of the blood-money and the work on it (2458–2465): the letter of Amr ibn Hazm (may God be pleased with him) on blood-money, the timing of blood-money, the ages of camels for deliberate homicide, and the insane, the adult and the child. ^{1 3}
• Blood-money for manslaughter, injuries, women and the unborn child (2466–2485): the blood-money for manslaughter, the blood-money for injuries, the blood-money of a woman in relation to a man, and the blood-money for a foetus and the ghurra. ^{3 4}
• Full blood-money, and the blood-money for the eye, wounds, fingers and teeth (2486–2515). ^{4 5}
• Blood-money for injuries to slaves, and blood-money for the protected people (2516–2525): a slave who is injured, retaliation between slaves, and the blood-money of a Jew, a Christian and a Magian. ^{6 7}
• What makes a man liable for blood-money from his own property, and the inheritance of blood-money (2526–2540): what the kinsmen carry and what they do not carry, and the inheritance of the killer. ^{7 8}
• General reports on blood-money, ghila and sorcery (2541–2554): the unpunished bloodshed, an animal's offence, a well, and an unidentified slain person. ^{9 10}
• What calls for deliberate retaliation, retaliation for killing and injuries, and pardon (2555–2571). ^{10 2}
• Reports on the blood-money of a sa'iba and its offence (2572). ²

Malik holds that blood-money is assessed in camels, or in gold and silver according to the people of the region, that it is not accepted from village people in camels nor from desert people in gold, and that the kinsmen bear nothing of the blood-money for deliberate homicide unless they consent, and do not bear less than a third. He holds that women and children are not liable with the kinsmen, and that the one who kills deliberately does not inherit the blood-money. He takes retaliation between free persons, slaves and women according to the basis in the verse, and holds that homicide removes any prescribed punishment that came before it, except slander. ^{3 11 12}

The editor quotes Ibn Abd al-Barr on the cut-off transmission of the hadith of the letter of Amr ibn Hazm, that it was also reported connected by a sound route, and that it is known among historians of the biography. ¹ He also records the disagreement of Malik's companions over the chain of the hadith of the qasama in Khaybar, and that Ibn Abd al-Barr counted it cut off in Malik's transmission. ¹³

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 Blood-money for the places where its rulings appear in the book. ¹