This chapter follows the process by which Muslim scholars introduced the innovative Umayyad practice of blood-money payment into the Shari‘a. It focuses on the literature of the Ḥanafī school, the only school that incorporated the Umayyad regulation, and reveals how the Ḥanafīs Islamized the Umayyad practice by attributing it to weighty religious authorities from the past, particularly to the second caliph ʿUmar b. al-Khaṭṭāb. The chapter offers a close examination of the arguments and the ḥadīths that served to substantiate the transformation of the Umayyad practice into a Sharʿi rule.

This chapter offers a full picture of the modifications that the Ḥanafī jurists introduced in the method of blood-money payment, basing on Umayyad practice and regulations. It suggests that these Ḥanafī jurists broadened significantly the Umayyad innovation of the method of payment, by changing also the composition of the ‘āqila. They removed the liability for blood money from the perpetrator's kinsmen, transferring it to the warriors of his military division who were registered with him on the same payroll of the dīwān. Together with other changes motivated by administrative considerations, the Ḥanafīs transformed the ‘āqila from a tribal solidarity group of limited size, into a group of thousands of men who shared no blood ties. The payment of blood money, previously the most important expression of solidarity, became a compulsory toll, which the government could levy by deduction from a large group, selected according to its own considerations.

This chapter describes how, shortly after the advent of Islam, the ultimate responsibility for blood-money payment was transferred to state administration, and how the method of payment was modified accordingly. With a view to assisting the ruler supervising the payments, the Umayyads regulated that instead of direct payment by the ‘āqila, the injured party were to receive their dues from money deducted from the annual stipends to which the ‘āqila members were entitled by virtue of their being registered in the military dīwān, the Muslim army. The introduction of this Umayyad innovation by the caliph Mu‘awiyya is presented, as well as historical evidence of its actual practice throughout the Umayyad empire.