Offspring (nasl) and its legal rulings

النَّسْل

Nasl means offspring or progeny in the lexicon, and the jurists use it for the young of a human or an animal, and for the foetus. ¹ Offspring is one of the aims of the Law and one of the necessities that must be preserved, since the continuation of the human kind depends on it; al-Shatibi lists five necessities, namely religion, life, offspring, property and reason. ¹ Al-Sarakhsi holds that marriage is the lawful path to procreation, and al-Ghazali that its purpose is to continue the offspring. ¹ The Prophet urged marrying an affectionate, prolific woman, and the entry reports a hadith with the grade attributed to al-Haythami. ² Castration is forbidden because it cuts off offspring. ³ The jurists differ on coitus interruption: some forbid it outright, some allow it outright, and some allow it only with the wife's permission. ² The Malikis forbid a man to cut off his semen so that he cannot father a child; the Shafi'is hold that cutting offspring is forbidden even with medicine. ³ The jurists agree that abortion is forbidden after ensoulment and differ before it. ⁴ Whoever harms a person and thereby destroys his capacity to beget owes full blood money. ³ The young of a usurped animal is returned with its mother. ⁴ On a mortgaged animal, the majority hold that its young is mortgaged with it, while the Shafi'is disagree. ⁴ In a waqf made for the offspring, the Shafi'is, some Hanafis and the Hanbalis admit the children of daughters, while the Hanbalis admit them only with a clue and the Malikis by custom. ^{4 5} A forward sale of the young of a particular animal is not valid for the Shafi'is and Hanbalis, because such a combination is rare. ⁵