Keeping a dog and companion animals

The dog holds a distinct place in fiqh: useful and admitted in certain uses, discouraged without need. The encyclopedia frames the question through the qirat hadiths.

What is agreed: the useful dog

Whoever keeps a dog, a qirat is deducted from his reward each day, except the dog of crops, livestock or hunting.al-Bukhari 2197 ; Muslim 1574-1575

The scholars agree on the permission of keeping the dog of hunting, ploughing and livestock, an-Nawawi stating it without divergence: need calls for the animal in these three uses. The hadith's wording fixes the measure: one or two qirats deducted each day for a dog kept without these utilities.

Beyond the three uses

The schools part on other cases. The Hanafis permit keeping a dog for any lawful benefit: guarding the house, the field, property, and deem it disliked without utility (Muhammad ibn al-Hasan's view). The Malikis, in the Risala of Ibn Abi Zayd, forbid the dog in houses outside the uses of crops, livestock or hunting for subsistence and not for play; the book reports that its author, fearing for his life, took a guard dog and answered: « had Malik lived in our time, he would have taken a lion »: pressing need widens the permission.

What the hadith does not cover

The question of the companion animal without utility is settled by these rules: neither the hadith nor the encyclopedia's chapters open a « companion dog » category; the schools apply to it either permission conditioned on benefit (Hanafis) or restriction to the named uses (Malikis). Other animals (cat, birds) raise no keeping problem in the chapters treated here.

Practical note

The reading grid is twofold: the recognized utility (hunting, livestock, crops, guarding) and the measure of the hadith (the deducted qirat). It allows classifying each case without improvisation.