Ahkam al-Talaq (al-Talaq al-Sunni wa al-Talaq al-Bidi)
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- Dar al-Sumay'i lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzi'
Ahkam al-Talaq (al-Talaq al-Sunni wa al-Talaq al-Bid'i) (The Rulings of Divorce: Sunnah Divorce and Bid'ah Divorce) is a contemporary treatise on Islamic jurisprudence by the Saudi scholar Ahmad al-Zuman (Abu Abd al-Rahman Ahmad ibn Abd al-Rahman al-Zuman), completed in 1435 AH (2014 CE) . The book examines the legal classifications of divorce in Islamic law, focusing on the scripturally prescribed form of divorce (al-talaq al-sunni) and innovative or prohibited forms (al-talaq al-bid'i) through a comparative analysis across the four Sunni legal schools .
Background and Purpose
The author completed the work on 27 Jumada al-Ula 1435 AH in Buraydah in the Al-Qasim Province of Saudi Arabia, with printing supervised by Sulayman ibn Salih al-Rubay'an . Al-Zuman conceived this volume as the opening installment of a broader research project dedicated to the rulings of divorce, addressing issues frequently required by muftis, judges, and academic scholars . In the introduction, he emphasized the critical gravity of issuing legal rulings (fatwas) regarding marital ties without rigorous textual verification, warning against relying uncritically on transmitted secondary opinions or tailoring legal verdicts solely to avoid familial hardship .
Methodology
The book adopts a comparative jurisprudential method grounded in hadith and textual analysis:
- Presenting the viewpoints transmitted from the scholars of Ahl al-Sunnah, covering the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali schools .
- Documenting prophetic hadiths: citing directly to Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim when available, and tracing chains, variant narrations, and supporting reports (shawahid) for other hadiths, while drawing upon classical works of hadith criticism ('ilal) and legal commentary .
- Tracing and grading reports (athar) transmitted from the Companions and early generations in primary source collections .
- Examining claims of scholarly consensus (ijma'), verifying whether they are established or subject to recorded disagreement .
- Defining terms linguistically and technically according to each school before offering a preferred definition .
- Formulating potential proofs for issues even if classical jurists had not cited them directly, and concluding discussions with the author's preferred position (al-qawl al-rajih) .
- Glossing difficult vocabulary and omitting obsolete historical questions, such as the divorce of enslaved persons, except in brief summary .
Structure and Contents
The work is organized into chapters (abwab), each subdivided into sections (fusul) :
- Definition and Classifications of Divorce: Covers the linguistic definition of divorce, technical definitions across the Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi'i, and Hanbali madhhabs, and the author's preferred definition, followed by distinctions between prescriptive (taklifi) and declaratory (wad'i) rulings concerning separation .
- Sunnah and Bid'ah Divorce: Examines the definitions and conditions of al-talaq al-sunni and al-talaq al-bid'i according to the four schools and selects the most robust definitions .
- Bid'ah Divorce in Timing (al-Waqt): Discusses the rulings of divorcing a woman during her menstrual period (hayd), during post-natal bleeding (nifas), or during a period of purity (tuhr) in which sexual intercourse occurred .
- Bid'ah Divorce in Number (al-'Adad): Treats pronouncements of multiple divorces at once, such as issuing a triple divorce in a single word or single purity period without intermediate resumption of marriage, analyzing both its normative prohibition and its legal efficacy .
- Divorce Described Neither as Sunnah nor as Bid'ah: Addresses categories of women for whom timing does not render divorce innovative or prohibited, including pregnant women, unconsummated wives, those who do not menstruate due to youth or menopause, and women experiencing chronic irregular bleeding (mustahadah) .
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