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What is the ruling on eating what a beast of prey has hunted?

1 min readAlso available in العربية

The name "savage beast" (sab') is applied to any predatory animal, and hunting by it has two situations:

1. When the savage beast hunts for its owner: Its game is lawful if the savage beast is trained and hunts when sent by its owner. This includes trained dogs, cheetahs, and falcons. Conditions for training an animal: It responds when sent, refrains when prohibited, and does not eat from the prey it catches. Hunting with a trained animal is only lawful if its owner sends it. If it sets off on its own, it is not lawful. If the prey caught by a trained animal is found alive, its slaughter (dhakah) by proper ritual cutting is obligatory. However, if the hunting animal is not trained, its game is not lawful unless it is found alive and then slaughtered.

2. When the animal hunts for itself: If a savage beast attacks an animal to eat it and kills it, what remains of this animal is considered carrion (maytah) and is not permissible to eat. An exception is made for what is found alive with stable life and then slaughtered, in which case it is lawful to eat, based on the verse: (وَمَا أَكَلَ السَّبُعُ إِلَّا مَا ذَكَّيْتُمْ) "And what the savage beast has eaten, except what you have [ritually] slaughtered."

Summarized from the full answer at Ftawy · reviewed Sep 2, 2026

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