Mahram

In fiqh a maḥram is someone whom a person is permanently forbidden to marry through kinship of blood, suckling or marriage alliance; the Kuwaiti encyclopedia gives the term its own entry detailing the three grounds of maḥramiyya ¹. Blood maḥrams are fixed by revealed text — mothers, daughters, sisters, aunts and the children of siblings — and suckling forbids what kinship forbids in the view of the majority, though they differ on the details of the analogy ².

Maḥramiyya reaches beyond the marriage prohibition: maḥrams come first in washing and burying the dead in the view of the majority of jurists ³. It appears in the law of looking and the ʿawra, where a maḥram may look "without desire" at what lies beyond the zone between navel and knee ⁴. And it runs into transactions, where the rules distinguish maḥrams in sale, maintenance and guardianship ⁵.

• Text from the harvested Kuwaiti Fiqh Encyclopedia (Noor-Book scan): the "maḥram" entry pp. 13969–13981 (definition, grounds, effects on ʿawra, washing and dealings) and "ibn al-ukht among the maḥrams" p. 1460. Details of suckling (number of feedings, proof) belong to its own entry in the source.