Islamic Fiqh > Foods and drinks > Game and hunting
Lawful hunting: the conditions of tool, shooter and game, the training of hunting animals, and found game.
Contents
Updated on 06 October 2026 at 10:50 PM
Hunting is lawful as a principle, except for the pilgrim in ihram and the sacred territory (al-Ma'ida 2 and 96). The encyclopedia then frames the practice: the tool, the shooter, the trained animal, the name of Allah and the recovered game.
What made the blood gush, with the name of Allah mentioned, eat of it, except the tooth and the nail: the tooth is a bone and the nail is the knife of the Abyssinians.
al-Bukhari 5224 ; Muslim 1968
Every sharp weapon that makes the blood gush counts: iron, edged stone, sharpened wood, reed, glass. What kills by weight without a cut (a blunt projectile) does not render the game lawful if the animal dies without a cutting wound; game struck and killed without a cut is eaten only if slaughtered afterwards. An animal caught in the net and dead is not eaten, whether the net carries a blade or not; struck game becomes lawful only if it is recovered alive and slaughtered.y the game reached by slaughter.
If you send your trained dog while mentioning the name of Allah, eat what it catches for you; if it eats of the animal, do not eat, for I fear it caught it only for itself; and if another dog joins it, do not eat.
al-Bukhari 5169 ; Muslim 1929
The dog or the falcon must be trained: it answers the call, restrains itself at the command. On its eating of the prey, the schools divide: Hanafis, Shafi'is in the mazhab and Hanbalis in the mazhab require that it not eat, based on the hadith, while Malikis, Shafi'is in one view and Hanbalis in one transmission rely on the general verse « eat what they catch for you » (al-Ma'ida 4). For the falcon and hunting birds, the encyclopedia records agreement: what they peck of the prey does no harm, since they cannot be kept from pecking.
The shot must aim at hunting: the arrow fallen from the hand that kills does not authorize. The invocation at the moment of release divides: Hanbalis make it a condition; Shafi'is a confirmed sunna, the animal remaining lawful, based on Aisha's hadith: « people bring us meat and we do not know whether they pronounced the name of Allah: pronounce it and eat » (al-Bukhari 1952).
If it dies before being caught, it is lawful; if caught alive, it requires slaughter, by agreement of the jurists. Malik, followed by the majority, rejects the meat of the hunter able to slaughter who neglects until the animal dies. If the animal drank its own blood, no school derives an obstacle from it.
The conditions of training (return, restraint) and of the cutting wound form the common ground; the rest belongs to school detail.
Al-Hawi al-Kabir by al-Mawardi · Shafi'i school
He said: I asked him about game when one shoots it, and he said: when you shoot your arrow, mention the name of Allah; if you find it dead, eat it, unless you find it fallen into water and dead: you then do not know whether the water killed it or your arrow.
And he said: I asked him about the arrow of the mihrad (blunt instrument), and he said: what it struck with its point (jidd), eat it; what it struck with its side, is a wound (wathiq). And this hadith embraces the permissibility of hunting with all its instruments.
(Chapter:) Once the permissibility of hunting is established, game taken with all trained birds of prey is permitted, among the tearing beasts such as the dog, the cheetah and the leopard, and among the rending birds such as the gerfalcon, the peregrine falcon, the eagle and the vulture, and this is the view of.
Bidayat al-Mujtahid by Ibn Rushd · comparative
And Abu Hanifa and al-Shafi'i said: if the ritual slaughter of the straying camel cannot be managed, it is killed like game.
The cause of their disagreement: opposing the principle with the report, and that because the principle in this chapter is that the domestic animal is only eaten by slaughter (dhabh) or neck-cutting (nahr), and that the wild animal is eaten by piercing (aqr).