Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Historical background
Prior to Islam, and within the Arabian Peninsula, the system of inheritance was
confined to male descendants. Women not only did not have any share of
inheritance, but they themselves were inheritable too.[1] Siblings from the
mother's side, like half-brothers or half-sisters, were completely excluded.
Other Semitic cultures also practiced primogeniture, under which all property
went to the eldest male child.[1]
from the mothers side, which were excluded from inheritance in old customs.
The heirs mentioned in the Qur'an are the mother, father, husband, wife,
daughter, uterine brother, full sister, uterine sister, and consanguine sister.
In general, the Qur'an improved the status of women by identifying their share
of inheritance in clear terms. It also completely forbade the practice of
inheriting widows.[4:19] Orientalist Joseph Schacht states that "this is not meant
as a regular legal ordinance, but is part of the Qur'anic endeavor to improve
the position of women."[1] The Qur'an does not explicitly mention the shares of
male relatives, such as the decedent's son, but provides the rule that the son's
share must be twice that of the daughter's. Muslim theologians explain this
aspect of inheritance by looking at Islamic law in its entirety, which bestows
the responsibility and accountability on men to provide safety, protection and
sustenance to women.
In addition to the above changes, the Qur'an grants testamentary powers to
Muslims in disposing their property.In their will, called waeyya, Muslims are
allowed to give out a maximum of one third of their property. Muslims are also
encouraged to give money to the orphans and poor if they are present during
the division of property.
Later development
The Qur'an contains only three verses which give specific details of
inheritance and shares, in addition to few verses dealing with testamentary
power. It has also been reported in Hadith that Muhammad allotted great
importance to the laws of inheritance and ordered his followers to learn and
teach them. Muslim jurists used these verses as a starting point to expound
the laws of inheritance even further using Hadith, as well as methods of juristic
reasoning, like Qiyas. In later periods, large volumes of work have been
written on the subject.
This amalgamation of old agnatic customs and Islamic law led to a number of
problems and controversies that Muslim jurists have solved with great
ingenuity. Through the use of deductive reasoning (Qiyas), Muslim jurists
added three additional heirs: the paternal grandfather, maternal grandmother,
and agnatic granddaughter. These heirs, if entitled to inherit, are given their
fixed shares and the remaining estate is inherited by the residuaries (aaba).
In some cases, they have also upheld the rule of men having twice the share
of women in circumstances not readily mentioned in the Qur'an, and tried to
deal with complex cases in a variety of different contexts. This led to some
minor differences between jurisprudence schools of the Sunni maddhabs.
Also, the laws of inheritance for Twelver Shia, despite being based on the
same principles, differ in a number of features due to the rejection of certain
accounts of Hadith and based on their understanding of certain events in early
Islam.[1] On the other hand, the system of inheritance of the Kharajite Ibadis
and Zaidis closely resemble that of the Sunni system. In modern Muslim
countries, usually a mixture of different schools of jurisprudence (including
Shia) is in effect, in addition to a number of important reforms to the traditional
system. The main achievements of such modern systems was the codification
of inheritance laws.
2. The amount that he or she can bequeath (which must not exceed one third