Ruling 473

If a woman with a habit experiences bleeding for three or more days and after that her bleeding stops, and if she then experiences bleeding again and the gap between the two bleedings is less than ten days, and if all the days on which she experiences bleeding plus the days on which her bleeding stops total more than ten – for example, she experiences bleeding for five days, then her bleeding stops for five days, and then she experiences bleeding again for five days – in such a case, there are a few scenarios to consider:

1. All or some of the woman’s first bleeding was on the days of her habit and her second bleeding was not on the days of her habit; in this case, she must consider all of her first bleeding to be ḥayḍ and her second bleeding to be istiḥāḍah. However, if her second bleeding has the attributes of ḥayḍ, she must add together the number of days of her first bleeding and the number of days on which her bleeding stopped after her first bleeding; then, to that figure, she must add a number of days from her second bleeding such that the total number of days does not exceed ten. Having done this, she must consider her first bleeding and the bleeding on the days she added from her second bleeding to be ḥayḍ and the rest to be istiḥāḍah. For example, if she experiences bleeding for three days, then her bleeding stops for three days, and then she experiences bleeding again for five days and her second bleeding has the attributes of ḥayḍ, the first three days plus four days from her second bleeding is ḥayḍ. For the days in between when her bleeding stops, she must, based on obligatory precaution, perform the obligatory acts that are required of a non-ḥāʾiḍ and refrain from doing the things that are unlawful for a ḥāʾiḍ;
2. The woman’s first bleeding is not on the days of her habit, and all or some of her second bleeding is on the days of her habit. In this case, she must consider all of her second bleeding to be ḥayḍ and her first bleeding to be istiḥāḍah;
3. Some of the woman’s first and second bleeding is on the days of her habit, and her first bleeding that was on the days of her habit lasts for not less than three days, and the number of days on which her bleeding stops in between and some of the days of her second bleeding that was also on the days of her habit does not exceed ten. In this case, both bleedings are ḥayḍ. The obligatory precaution is that on the days that her bleeding stops in between, she must do the things that are obligatory for a non-ḥāʾiḍ and refrain from doing the things that are unlawful for a ḥāʾiḍ. The days of the second bleeding after the days of her habit are considered to be istiḥāḍah. As for the amount of the first bleeding that she experiences before the days of her habit, in the event that it can commonly be said that her habit has moved forward, it is ruled as ḥayḍ unless considering it as ḥayḍ results in some or all the days of her second bleeding that was also on the days of her habit to exceed ten days, in which case it is ruled as istiḥāḍah. For example, if a woman’s habit is from the third of the month to the tenth, and she experiences bleeding from the first to the sixth in one month, then her bleeding stops on two days, and then she experiences bleeding again until the fifteenth, in such a case the bleeding that she experiences from the first to the tenth is ḥayḍ, and the bleeding that she experiences from the eleventh to the fifteenth is istiḥāḍah;
4. The woman experiences some of her first and second bleeding on the days of her habit but the part of her first bleeding that she experiences on the days of her habit is less than three days. In this case, she must consider the last three days of her first bleeding to be ḥayḍ. Similarly, her second bleeding – which together with the first three days and the days on which her bleeding stops in between total ten days – must also be considered to be ḥayḍ, and whatever is more than that is istiḥāḍah. If the number of days on which her bleeding stops is seven, all of her second bleeding is istiḥāḍah. In some cases, she must consider all of her first bleeding to be ḥayḍ, and this is when two conditions are fulfilled:
   1. all of her first bleeding has moved ahead to such an extent that her habit can be said to have moved forward;
   2. if all of her first bleeding were to be considered ḥayḍ, the number of days of her second bleeding that she experienced on the days of her habit would not exceed ten. For example, if the habit of a woman was from the third of the month to the tenth, and she now experiences bleeding from the first of the month until the end of the fourth day, then her bleeding stops for two days, and then she experiences bleeding again until the fifteenth, in such a case, all of her first bleeding is ḥayḍ. Similarly, the second bleeding until the end of the tenth day is ḥayḍ.