A Critique of the Restriction of Inheritance in Cases of Deaths with Unknown Timing for Drowning Victims and Those Buried Under the Ruins (gharqī va mahdūm ʿalayhim) (Based on Verbal Relationships in the Ḥadīths)

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

• Seyede Reyhaneh Rezaeian ¹
• Mohammad Rasoul Ahangaran ²
• Mohammad Ja’fari Harandi ³

¹ PhD Student, Jurisprudence and Foundations of Islamic Law, Faculty of Law, Theology, and Political Science, Islamic Azad University, Science and Research Branch, Tehran, Iran

² Professor, Department of Theology and Islamic Studies, University of Tehran, Farabi Campus, Qom, Iran

³ Associate Professor, Department of Fiqh and Foundations of Islamic Law, Faculty of Humanities, Islamic Azad University, Yadegar Imam Khomeini Branch, Shahr-i Rey, Iran

10.22067/jfiqh.2024.85593.1695

Abstract

For a person to inherit, it must be verified that the heir was alive after the death of the deceased. Individuals whose time of death is unknown and whose precedence of succession or death compared to one another is unclear do not meet this condition according to the implication of the primary principle. In the two cases of “drowning” and “structural collapse”, however, this rule has an exception, and the unknown time of death does not prevent the other party from inheritance. The more widely held legal opinion holds that this exception should be interpreted limited to appearance of text. However, scholars who advocate its generalization often rely on general customary associations, without focusing on the Situations of words which are used in proofs, and have therefore argued that the titles used in restriction proofs are not essential to the ruling. As a result, based on the principle of Nullification of the Character of the Gharq (drowning) and Hadm (collapse), they have generalized the aforementioned ruling to similar cases. The present study, which has been conducted using the descriptive-analytical method, aims to uncover the verbal associations present in specific wordings of legal evidences through reflection upon the Ḥadīths, in order to reveal the underlying criterion and refine the effective cause (tanqīḥ al-manāṭ).  Through this lens, the ruling may be extended to comparable situations, such as car accidents, etc. In this study, it has been established by using the Situations of words which are used in proofs as contextual indicators, that the terms gharq (drowning) and hadm (collapse) lack inherent legal significance (mawżūʿiyyat).

Keywords

• Deaths with unknown timing
• inheritance in cases of being buried under the ruins and drowning
• Article 873 of the Civil Code
• inheritance in cases of car accidents

Main Subjects

• Principles of jurisprudence

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