One of the men who was present at the hearing told them...

One of the men who was present at the hearing told them privately to come and see me, and he said to them, "Ask al-Tijani on these matters for he knows all the Madhhabs, and on many occasions I had seen him arguing with these learned scholars and beating them with his logical reasoning." That is what the husband of that woman told me when I took him to my library where he told me the whole case in detail, and said to me, "Sir, my wife wants to commit suicide and our boys are neglected and we do not know how we can solve this problem, and people led us to you hoping that you might have an answer to our problem, especially since I see all these books in your possession, which I have never seen before in my life.” I brought him some coffee and thought about the case for a little while then I asked him about the number of times that he was breast-fed from that old woman.

He said, "I do not know, but my wife was breast-fed by her twice or three times and her father testified that he took his daughter two or three times to that old woman." I said, “if that is right, then there is no problem and your marriage is legal and valid." The poor man fell on me kissing my hands and head, saying, “May Allah bring you good news for you opened the gates of peace to me." Before even finishing his coffee or asking me for any reference, he asked permission to leave my house and hurriedly went out to tell his wife and children and the rest of his family about the good news.

But the day after he came back with seven men and introduced them to me saying, "This is my father, this is my father-in-law, the third is the mayor of the village, the fourth is the Imam of the Friday prayers, the fifth is the religious adviser, the sixth is the chief of the tribe and the seventh is the headmaster of the school, and all of them came to investigate the case of the breast-feeding and how you considered the marriage to be valid." I took the whole party to the library, and greeted them and offered them coffee for I expected a lengthy debate with them.

They said, "We came to discuss with you how you legalized a marriage in which the couple were breast-fed from the same woman. Such a marriage has been forbidden by Allah in the Qur'an and by His Messenger who said that it (marriage) is forbidden between a couple who have been breast-fed (by the same woman) in the same way as it is forbidden between a couple who are related (brother and sister).