Rada (fiqh)

Raḍāʿ or riḍāʿa (Arabic: رضاع, رضاعة) is a technical term from Sunni Islamic jurisprudence meaning "the suckling which produces the legal impediment to marriage of foster-kinship". The term derives from the infinitive noun of the Arabic word radiʿa or radaʿa ("he sucked the breast of his mother"). Often it is translated as "fosterage" or "milk-kinship".

The concept of radāʿ derives from Islamic and pre-Islamic notions concerning the state of consanguinity created between wet nurse and unrelated nursling—that is, a woman and a baby other than her own—through the act of breastfeeding. Radāʿ also defines the links between various relations and family members of both wet nurse and baby, such that not only are the two forbidden in marriage to one another, but so are their relations in various combination (e.g. the nursling's biological brother with the milk-mother's biological daughter). Conversely, the milk-relationship allows usually forbidden familiarities between the two, particularly if the nursling is male and of adult stature, such as viewing the milk-mother unveiled or in private, exactly as if he were a relation.

Radāʿ receives extensive treatment in the Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh) of the classical jurists (faqih). A primary feature of such works is the delineation of which relationships are subject to prohibition once the milk relationship is established. The following are the sorts of questions directed to the founder of the Hanbali school of jurisprudence by his son:

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