Wednesday, 29 April 2026 (12 Dhuʻl-Qiʻdah 1447 AH)
Question: A madman has four sisters, a mother, a paternal uncle, and cousins. This madman has been missing for more than seventy-five years, and on the day he disappeared he was more than fifteen years old. No news of him has been known from the day of his disappearance until now. The strongest assumption is that he left the road and that wild beasts devoured him. This assumption arose from tracking his footprints, for they stopped in some beast-infested wilderness. Give us a legal verdict on how the property of this madman is to be divided, for there is ongoing dispute about that.
At present, two of his sisters are still alive; the third died about a year ago, and the fourth died about five years before that. The uncle died long before that, while his sons are still alive to this day.
Answer – and Allah is the One who grants success: If the heirs have a predominant assumption of the madman’s death in the first days of his disappearance, based on indications that point to that, then they may divide what the madman left. In that case, his mother receives one-sixth, his four sisters receive two-thirds, and the remainder goes to his paternal uncle because he is his ʿaṣabah; and that remainder is the (last) one-sixth.
Yes, acting on predominant assumption (al-ẓann al-ghālib) in such a case is permissible, and it is the madhhab of some of our Imams (peace be upon them), among them al-Mu’ayyad bi-llāh (peace be upon him), as in al-Azhar.
The proof for the permissibility of acting on circumstantial indications (qarā’in) is what Allah, Exalted is He, mentioned and related in the story of Yūsuf (peace be upon him) as evidence of his innocence, in His saying: “If his shirt is torn from the front, then she has told the truth and he is of the liars. But if his shirt is torn from the back, then she has lied and he is of the truthful. So when he (the husband) saw that his shirt was torn from the back, he said, ‘Indeed, this is of your women’s plotting; indeed, your plotting is great. O Yūsuf, ignore this…’” [Yūsuf:12].
The aspect of inference is that Allah, Exalted is He, has related this as evidence of Yūsuf’s innocence, did not censure it, but rather approved it.
Thus, if the heirs do not attain a predominant assumption of his death, they should postpone the division of his property until they do attain a predominant assumption or certain knowledge of his death. Whenever such certainty or predominant assumption occurs to them, they then divide his property. On that basis, his property is to be divided among the heirs who are alive at the time when the knowledge or predominant assumption of his death is attained. The scholars of the madhhab have determined that this may be assumed by the passing of a natural lifetime, which they set at one hundred and twenty years.
As for me, I hold that the lifetime by which one waits in the case of a lost missing person should be estimated according to the lifespan of the majority and the great mass of people in his land, and that is from eighty to ninety years. For those who are long-lived generally do not exceed ninety; and if they do, it is by a year or two. It has been reported in a narration: “The harvest of my ummah is between sixty and seventy [years],” and the Arabs call the decade that follows sixty “daqāqat al-riqāb” (“the neck-crusher”).
As for one hundred and twenty, none of the long-lived reach it except the rare exception. One who surveys the population of Yemen, which numbers around twenty million, may not find more than one or two such persons – and may not find anyone at all.
Source: Min Thimār al-ʿIlm wa al-Ḥikmah vol.2