Islamic Fiqh > Foods and drinks > Food differences: blood, gellala, insects
Divergent questions among the schools: blood cooked in meat, gellala (animals fed on impurities), insects and poisons.
Updated on 31 August 2026 at 3:55 AM
Three questions divide or subdivide the schools: blood, the jallala (animal fed on impurity) and the fish dead of its own death. The encyclopedia treats them with the texts of each side.
Poured-out blood (masfuh) is forbidden and impure by the scholars' unanimity, based on al-Ma'ida 3 and al-An'am 145; al-Qurtubi and Ibn Hazm record the agreement, for food and every other use alike. This prohibition targets the blood that gushes; what remains in the meat after slaughter does not enter the category, which is why slaughter aims to drain it.
The Prophet forbade the meat of the jallala and its milk.Abu Dawud 3785 ; at-Tirmidhi 1824 ; Ibn Majah 3189
The jallala is the animal whose largest share of food is impure. If it has been set apart and fed on pure feed, its meat becomes lawful again for all the schools; Ibn Umar confined it three days, forty days for the camel and the cow in another report. Without confinement, the Hanbalis (and some Shafi'is) forbid it, meat, milk and eggs; Hanafis, Shafi'is (in the mazhab), Hanbalis in one transmission and some Malikis deem it disliked without forbidding it, the cause being disgust and protecting the taste of the meat; the encyclopedia notes that the matter remaining in the belly does not pass into the flesh, just as the plant grown on an impure ground stays lawful.
The fish floating dead in the water with no visible cause (tafi) divides: the Hanafis forbid it, on the hadith « what the sea casts on the shore, eat it; what dies in the water and floats, do not eat » (Abu Dawud 3815, judged weak) and on the carrion verse. The majority (Malikis, Shafi'is, Hanbalis) allows it, based on al-Ma'ida 96 and the words of Abu Bakr (« the tafi is lawful »), Umar (« its food is its dead ») and Ibn Abbas recorded by al-Bukhari. The fish thrown by the sea onto the shore is lawful for all.
None of these questions touches most people's daily life: poured blood, stable jallala and floating fish are bounded cases; the schools have drawn their limits there without disturbing the basic rule.