Determining the days of Haidh and related queries

Assalamualaikum Hazrat Mufti Sb

We would like some clarification on a few masaa’il relating to haidh. Some of these masaa’il do not appear in the maktab syllabus (tuhfatul banaat) nor in Behishti Zewar. 

Question 1.                        

A lady has a habit of 7 days haidh. 

This month, her bleeding stopped after 4 days. She had a ghusl and began reading salah. 

Thereafter, 14 days later she bled again.

We previously were counting the next day (one day) as istihadha, and then, because 15 days has passed since the last haidh ended, the days thereafter were counted as haidh. This is what we understood from Tuhfatul Banaat

However, we have read the following fatwa 

The law for spotting before the fifteenth day of tuhr is that you will revert to your last habit of tuhr and haidh before the irregular bleeding and calculate your tuhr and haidh according to that. 

According to this, in the above situation, the haidh that passed would be counted as 7 days. One would have to check when one had a ghusl after the 7 days, and repeat the salah between the 7 days and the ghusl. Please clarify. 

Question 2.                        

Behisthi Zewar does not make any mention of a habit for one's tuhr nor give any examples, as the above rule clearly mentions. 

In the previous example, if the lady’s last full tuhr was 18 days, and after that she didn’t experience a full 15 day tuhr, then the 7 days would be haidh and 18 days would be regarded as tuhr? This would continue till a full 15 days tuhr is found. Please clarify.

Question 3.                        

We would like some clarification on the following fatwa regarding counting ones habit :

In determining the days of aadat (haidh pattern), the days are considered e.g. if a woman bled for five days and few hours, her aadat (haidh pattern) will be regarded as five days.

From what we had understood, the time periods for the minimum and maximum haidh were to be calculated in hours (72 and 240), we therefore were counting the haidh/tuhr patterns in hours, rounding off to the nearest hour.

Can Mufti Sb please explain in detail the way to count one’s habit. What would be regarded as a ‘few’ hours? Does this mean rounding off to the nearest day? What about if the habit was 5 days and 11 hours, would this be counted as 5 days? Does this mean 5 x 24 hours?

E.g. a lady’s last haidh was 5 days 7 hours. Her tuhr was 18 days. This month she bled continuously from Monday 13:00 and had to revert to her last habit. Would her haidh be considered to be till Saturday 13:00, or 20:00?

Question 4.                      

We have been taught that haidh starts from when blood is seen, and not by one merely thinking that she had discharge. 

Sometimes one may feel sure that haidh has commenced but on going to the bathroom one realises that it had not. On the contrary, at other times one may not feel anything, however, one sees blood thereafter and the haidh begins. Due to this, we were taught that haidh cannot be based on feeling a discharge.

There may be two situations:

a. One is expecting the haidh to start as per one’s habit. 

b. One is not expecting the haidh to start, as it is contrary to one's habit. 

In situation (a), when one is expecting the haidh and feels discharge (dominant thought) , or in situation (b) when one is not expecting the haidh, but contrary to one's habit, one's dominant thought is that there is some haidh discharge, if one has to delay checking for blood and later sees the blood, would the beginning of haidh be considered to be from the sight of the blood, or from the time one felt the discharge? Would there be any difference in situation (a) and (b)? 

We were under the impression that the beginning and ending is simply based on the sight of blood. Hence, whilst fasting, upon feeling discharge after asr, in both the above situations, many people delay checking for blood to after maghrib, in order to "save" the fast.

The same masla would apply during tawaf, salah etc.

Jazakallah khayra,