Islam > Glossary > Msala al-ghrawyn
Discover the meaning of the term Msala al-ghrawyn (مسألة الغراوين) in Islamic vocabulary.
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Updated on 11 April 2026 at 1:05 AM
📖 2 min readIt is among the perplexed problems of the science of inheritance. Its form: a man dies leaving a wife, a mother, and a father; or a woman dies leaving a husband, a mother, and a father. In the first the wife takes the quarter; in the second the husband the half; in both the mother takes the third and the father the rest; but the rest is less than the third, so the mother would inherit more than the father, which is not the custom of inheritances nor of their constant rules; hence they said: the mother inherits a third of the remainder and the father the remainder, so interpreting the relevant verse. The qadis' problem: were a daughter to buy her father and free him, then the father buy a slave and free him, then the father die leaving her and a son, then the freedman die, his inheritance goes to the son and not the daughter, for the son is an 'asaba by manumission (mu'taq) with kinship in himself, while the daughter is mu'taqa bi-l-mu'taq (freed by the liberator); the first is stronger. It is called the qadis' problem because it is said four hundred judges, apart from those in agreement, erred in it by assigning the inheritance to the daughter. (Fath al-Wahhab 2/7.)