The case of beginners and menopausal women

Menstrual life has a beginning and an end. The first sight of blood in a young girl and the last age of menses in an aging woman raise precise questions: from when does blood count as menses? Until when? The schools answer with ranges, narrations from the imams, and a return to observation.

This page also covers the profile of the three women facing blood, the beginner, the habituated and the pregnant, which determines the maximum number of days to retain.

The age of the first menses

The majority of jurists, Hanafites, Malikites, Shafiites and Hanbalites in the madhhab, set the lowest age of menses at nine lunar years. No woman has habitually menstruated before this age, neither by observation nor by tradition, and the young girl does not menstruate. The Quranic proof is the word of Allah:

Those of your women who no longer expect menses: if you doubt, their waiting period is three months; and so too those who have not yet menstruated; and for the pregnant women, their term is at their delivery. Whoever fears Allah, He makes his affairs easy for him.

Surah at-Talaq, 4

Menstrual blood was created to carry pregnancy and nourish the child: she who cannot carry does not meet that wisdom, as with semen, which creates the child while the blood nourishes it; neither exists in the little girl, and their appearance marks religious maturity. Aisha reports: "When the young girl reaches nine years, she is a woman"; the statement is also transmitted as a word of the Prophet, and the meaning is that she takes the ruling of a woman.

Al-Shafi'i said: the most precocious women I have seen are those of the Tihama, they menstruate at nine years; and he saw a grandmother of twenty-one years, which proves a pregnancy before ten years; his daughter experienced the same. The correct position establishes no difference between hot countries and cold countries on this point.

Practical consequence: a girl of nine years who sees blood leaves the prayer, for she sees it in a time suitable for menses. Before nine years, the blood is blood of corruption in every hypothesis, for it cannot be menses. Al-Maymuni reports from Ahmad, about a girl of ten years who sees blood: it is not menses. The qadi deduces that the earliest age where the existence of menses is plausible is twelve years, by analogy with the boy's age, the safest.

Menopause and the last age of menses

Abu Hanifa, in the narration reported by al-Hasan ibn Ziyad, gives a last age of fifty-five to sixty years. Muhammad ibn al-Hasan gives fifty-five years for Romanized women and sixty for the mawalladat; but the view adopted among them, the one for fatwa, is fifty-five years.

Malik and al-Shafi'i give no limit: one returns to the customs of the countries, for it varies with them; the cessation of menses comes faster in hot countries and later in cold countries.

Ahmad has three narrations: the first sets the end at fifty years for Arabs and others; the second at sixty years; the third says that if they are Arabs the limit is sixty years, and if they are Nabatean or non-Arab, fifty years (Ibn Abidin 1/502-503, al-Mughni 1/459, al-Ifsah 1/110).

Ibn Qudama decides the question: at fifty years, the woman who sees blood leaves neither the fast nor the prayer, but she makes up the fast as a precaution; at sixty years, the doubt has disappeared, she is certain that it is not menses, she fasts and prays without making up. Between fifty and sixty, the obligation of prayer and fasting is certain and does not fall by doubt, while the fast performed in that doubtful time is made up because only its validity is doubted.

Reports support the limit: Ishaq ibn Rahawayh said there are no menses after fifty years. Aisha reports: "When she reaches fifty years, she leaves the domain of menses," and "The woman will no longer carry a child in her womb after fifty years." Non-Arab women stop at fifty, those of Bani Hashim and the Arabs until sixty; al-Zubayr ibn Bakkar reports in the Book of Genealogies: "None gives birth after fifty years except the Arab woman, none gives birth after sixty except a Qurayshi woman," and Hind bint Abi Ubayda gave birth to Musa ibn Abdallah, son of al-Hasan, while she was sixty years old.

Ahmad yet says of an Arab woman who sees blood after fifty years: if it returns to her two or three times, it is menses, for one returns to existence. Menses were observed in reliable women who attested it about themselves after fifty years, which obliges counting it as menses, as before fifty. The correct position, says Ibn Qudama, establishes no difference between Arab women and others: the athar of Aisha is no proof, for the existence of menses is a real fact that is observed, and the mother of Musa ibn Abdallah gave birth after fifty years.

Three profiles: the beginner, the habituated, the pregnant

Among the Malikites, the maximum of blood is set by the profile of the woman, who is of three types facing menses (al-Dardir, al-Dasuqi 1/270-272):

• The beginner (mubtada'a), she who has never menstruated and sees blood for the first time: if the blood continues, the maximum of her days is fifteen days; everything beyond is blood of sickness, and she fasts, prays and intimacy is permitted. If her blood stops before fifteen days, she is purified; if it returns, she continues the count without exceeding fifteen days.
• The habituated (mu'tada), she whose custom settled in a single time: if the blood exceeds the days of her custom, she waits three days, which is the istihzar, on the condition that the total of days of blood and waiting does not exceed fifteen days. Example: a custom of five days, she may reach eight; if she exceeds again, she may reach eleven; then fourteen; then one day, without exceeding fifteen. After that she is pure, she fasts, prays and intimacy is permitted, and the blood flowing afterward is istihada.
• The pregnant woman: the dominant custom is the absence of blood. If blood surprises her: below two months of pregnancy, she is treated like the habituated woman, with her custom and her waiting; from two to six months, the duration of the blood is twenty days; from six months to the end of pregnancy, thirty days; beyond that, it is blood of sickness. The reason: the blood increases with the months, for the fetus grows and the veins fill. During the first and second month, the view to which Malik returns treats her like the non-pregnant habituated woman: she keeps her custom and her waiting; the other view, the one Malik abandoned, assimilates her to the third month. Ibn Yunus says that, according to Malik's retained view, she must sit out the first and second month according to her days and her waiting, for pregnancy does not appear before three months.

Practical note

In practice, age is observed, not calculated: the young girl counts her blood as menses from her puberty, and the aging woman follows her body; the view with no age limit, among Malikites and Shafiites, avoids declaring menopausal a woman who still sees blood matching her old custom, while the Hanafite range of fifty-five years and the narrations of Ahmad show the jurists' caution before observation.