Ruling 479

If a woman with a habit of time experiences bleeding on the days of her habit and the number of days that her bleeding lasts for is more than ten, and if on some of the days her bleeding has the attributes of ḥayḍ and on some other days it does not, and if the number of days that her bleeding has the attributes of ḥayḍ is not less than three nor more than ten, then in such a case, she must consider her bleeding on those days when it has the attributes of ḥayḍ to be ḥayḍ and the rest to be istiḥāḍah. If this type of bleeding is repeated – for example, four days with the attributes of ḥayḍ, followed by four days with the attributes of istiḥāḍah, followed by four days with the attributes of ḥayḍ again – she must consider only the first four days to be ḥayḍ and all the rest to be istiḥāḍah. If the bleeding with the attributes of ḥayḍ lasts for less than three days, she must consider it to be ḥayḍ and determine the number of days of it in one of two ways: either by referring to her close relatives or by selecting the number of days. If it is more than ten days, she must consider part of it to be ḥayḍ by one of these two ways. If a woman cannot distinguish the amount of ḥayḍ by means of its attributes – i.e. she finds that all the blood has the same attributes, or the blood that has the attributes of ḥayḍ lasts for more than ten days or less than three days – then she must consider it to be ḥayḍ according to the number of days of the habit of some of her close relatives, whether they be her paternal or maternal relatives, alive or dead. However, in this case, two conditions must be fulfilled:

1. The woman does not know that her close relative’s habit is different to the duration of her ḥayḍ. For example, she is youthful and healthy and the other woman is approaching the age of menopause, when usually the duration of a woman’s habit is shorter. The same applies if the situation is the other way round or the woman has an incomplete habit, the meaning and rules of which will be mentioned in Ruling 488.
2. The woman does not know that the habit of the other woman differs from the habit of her other close relatives who meet the first condition. However, there is no problem if the difference is very little such that it cannot really be counted. The same rule applies to a woman who has a habit of time and does not experience bleeding at all on the days of her habit but experiences bleeding at other times which lasts for more than ten days, and she cannot distinguish the duration of ḥayḍ by means of its attributes.