Introduction

Muḥammad ibn Ṣāliḥ al-ʿUthaymīn (1925-2001) was one of the most prominent Sunnī scholars of the twentieth century, studied under the great Saudi scholar ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī and was deeply influenced by the writings of Ibn Taymiyya and Ibn al-Qayyim al-Jawziyya. He served for decades as a teacher in Unayzah and later as a professor at the Islamic University of Madinah, producing an extensive body of fatāwā, commentaries, and independent treatises. Risāla fī al-Dimāʾ al-Ṭabīʿiyya lil-Marʾa, translated as Natural Blood of Women, belongs to a tradition of specialized jurisprudential treatises that address a topic requiring careful evidential reasoning and sensitivity to the needs of Muslim women in their daily worship and family life.

The treatise addresses three categories of natural female bleeding: menstruation (ḥayḍ), post-natal bleeding (nifās), and irregular or non-menstrual bleeding (istiḥāḍa). For each category, Ibn ʿUthaymīn presents the relevant Quranic verses, authenticated hadith, and positions of the classical schools, before drawing his conclusions with the careful weight one expects of a mujtahid of his caliber. His approach is notable for its concern with practicality: he recognizes that women navigating questions about prayer, fasting, marital relations, and ritual purity need rulings that are clearly articulated and grounded in strong evidence. The organizational structure of the book moves systematically through definitions, signs, durations, disputed cases, and the rulings attached to each state.

The book has achieved wide circulation in both Arabic and translation because it addresses a subject that every Muslim woman necessarily encounters yet that is often poorly explained in general introductory texts. Scholars have praised Ibn ʿUthaymīn's clarity of presentation and his willingness to engage the positions of all four major schools rather than restricting himself to any single one, while consistently preferring the position he found most strongly supported by the evidence. His rulings in this domain have been adopted in fatāwā institutions across the Muslim world and have provided a reliable reference for imams, teachers of Islamic studies for women, and individuals seeking reliable guidance. The treatise stands as an example of how classical fiqh methodology can be applied to produce practical, accessible scholarship.

A student reading this work should approach it with a basic familiarity with the rules of ritual purity (ṭahāra), as the rulings on bleeding are inseparable from the broader framework of ḥadath and its removal. Women seeking personal guidance are advised to read this alongside a qualified teacher or scholar who can help them apply general rulings to their individual circumstances, since irregular bleeding in particular involves case-by-case assessment. Readers will gain from this text a disciplined model of Islamic legal reasoning: the careful movement from textual evidence to legal conclusion, the respectful engagement with scholarly disagreement, and the constant orientation toward facilitating the believer's worship rather than burdening it unnecessarily.