The ‘āqila -- a group of men liable for the payment of blood money on behalf of any of them -- is based on collective liability. When the Shari‘a borrowed this institution from pre-Islamic, tribal custom, a contradiction was created with the Islamic important principle of individual responsibility. This chapter focuses on this contradiction, examining the means by which Muslims jurists attempted to settle, reduce, or justify the paradox, and how these efforts contributed to shaping the law. One way was to restrict the liability of the ‘āqila to accidental homicide, leaving the perpetrator alone liable for intentional homicide. Another solution was to develop arguments that either denied the contradiction or enhanced the importance of the ‘āqila to justify the existence of the institution despite the contradiction involved. It is argued that the changes introduced in rules related to the ‘āqila, and the proposed justifications, brought homicide, which in pre-Islamic Arab custom was treated as a tort, closer to a crime.

This chapter offers a full picture of the modifications that the Ḥanafī jurists introduced in the method of blood-money payment, basing on Umayyad practice and regulations. It suggests that these Ḥanafī jurists broadened significantly the Umayyad innovation of the method of payment, by changing also the composition of the ‘āqila. They removed the liability for blood money from the perpetrator's kinsmen, transferring it to the warriors of his military division who were registered with him on the same payroll of the dīwān. Together with other changes motivated by administrative considerations, the Ḥanafīs transformed the ‘āqila from a tribal solidarity group of limited size, into a group of thousands of men who shared no blood ties. The payment of blood money, previously the most important expression of solidarity, became a compulsory toll, which the government could levy by deduction from a large group, selected according to its own considerations.

This chapter shows how the Persian Ḥanafīs in Khurasan and Transoxania in the ninth and tenth centuries AD developed their own opinions about the composition of the ‘āqila, questioning the hegemony of the standard Ḥanafī law, which developed in Iraq. Three unique Persian opinions, which seem to reflect the reality of life in eastern Iran, are presented. The first one extends the ‘āqila beyond the military dīwān, claiming that the dīwān whose members serve as an ‘āqila may also be a civilian institution, whose members receive regular remuneration. According to the second opinion, the ‘āqila of those who do not receive a salary from the government is not necessarily their tribesmen, as ruled the Iraqī Ḥanafīs, but can be any solidarity group, such as the residents of the same quarter, or men of the same occupation. The third opinion rejects the ‘āqila, contending that this institution does not exist among Persian Muslims, because the structure of their society does not allow for solidarity groups.

Against the historical and literary background of the Ḥanafī opinions from eastern Iran as discussed Chapter 8, this chapter deals with the three distinctive opinions regarding the ‘āqila that developed there, as presented in Chapter 7. It tries both to reconstruct the historical context within which each of the opinions came into being, and to follow their path in the legal literature. This route starts from the fatwā collections in which they were first compiled and preserved, and continues to the standard literature into which they were eventually incorporated. This chapter also touches upon the evolution of the ‘āqila over the last few centuries, a process that reflects the weakening of social solidarity and of clan loyalties in Muslim societies.