Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Family ties as grounds of inheritance
- 2 Priorities in inheritance
- 3 Primary heirs
- 4 Substitute heirs
- 5 Secondary heirs
- 6 Grandfather and collaterals in competition
- 7 Succession by the outer family
- 8 Inheritance in Shīʻī law
- 9 Reforms in the traditional system of priorities
- 10 Dual relationships
- 11 Impediments to inheritance
- 12 Conditions of inheritance
- 13 Bequests
- 14 The limits of testamentary power
- 15 Death-sickness
- Index
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- 1 Family ties as grounds of inheritance
- 2 Priorities in inheritance
- 3 Primary heirs
- 4 Substitute heirs
- 5 Secondary heirs
- 6 Grandfather and collaterals in competition
- 7 Succession by the outer family
- 8 Inheritance in Shīʻī law
- 9 Reforms in the traditional system of priorities
- 10 Dual relationships
- 11 Impediments to inheritance
- 12 Conditions of inheritance
- 13 Bequests
- 14 The limits of testamentary power
- 15 Death-sickness
- Index
Summary
Qurʾanic provisions relating to succession by brothers and sisters
Although the group of secondary heirs includes all male agnates, however remote, other than lineal descendants or ascendants, it is the brothers and sisters of the praepositus who occupy pride of place within the group. Qurʾanic legislation relating to inheritance by brothers and sisters is confined to two brief statements.
(a) If the heirs of a deceased man or woman are collateral relatives and a brother or sister survives, then he or she takes one-sixth. But if there is more than one brother or sister, they share one-third
(Sūra 4, verse 12).(b) Allāh ordains concerning collateral relatives that if a man dies without a child and leaves a sister, she takes half of the inheritance; and he will be her heir if she dies without a child. If there are two sisters, they take two-thirds of the inheritance. If the collaterals include both males and females, then the male takes a share equivalent to that of two females
(Sūra 4, verse 176).While the Arabic words rendered here as “collateral relatives”, “brother” and “sister” are precisely the same in both passages, the consensus of juristic opinion maintains that text (a) refers solely to uterine brothers and sisters, and text (b) solely to agnatic collaterals, the germane and consanguine brothers and sisters of the deceased. On this basis the fundamental principles of succession by collaterals as laid down in the Qur'ān are clear enough.
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- Information
- Succession in the Muslim Family , pp. 65 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1971
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