al-Hukm al-Mashru fi al-Talaq al-Majmu - ضمن «Athar al-Muallimi»

Author died
1386 AH
Editions
Dār ʿĀlam al-Fawāʾid lil-Nashr wa-al-Tawzīʿ

al-Hukm al-Mashru fi al-Talaq al-Majmu (The Lawful Ruling on Combined Repudiation) is a legal treatise by the Yemeni scholar Abd al-Rahman al-Muallimi al-Yamani (d. 1386 AH / 1966 CE) examining the jurisprudential rulings on pronouncing three divorces simultaneously and the legal effect of innovative divorce (talaq bid'i).

Scope and Methodology

The primary focus of the work is the issue of threefold divorce pronounced in a single sitting or phrase (al-talaq al-thalath al-majmu'). al-Mu'allimi presents the contrasting views of the scholars on this question and analyses their arguments through critical evaluation of the transmitted prophetic traditions and early narrations (athar).

Structure and Contents

The work opens with an exegetical discussion of the Quranic verses governing divorce across five pages. al-Mu'allimi then transitions to the Sunnah under a dedicated heading compiling the hadiths cited by those who hold that pronouncing divorce three times, a thousand times, or more in a single expression counts as only a single revocable divorce. In this part, he conducts a detailed critique of the narrations, particularly the famous tradition transmitted by Abdullah ibn Abbas in Sahih Muslim and the mursal report of Urwah ibn al-Zubayr.

The author then begins the main body of the treatise, titled al-Hukm al-Mashru fi al-Talaq al-Majmu, arranged into chapters:

  • Chapter One: On Permissible Divorce (al-Bab al-Awwal fi al-Talaq al-Ma'dhun Fih): Discusses three scholarly schools of thought regarding the forms of divorce permitted by Islamic law, evaluating the evidence for each position and their reciprocal rebuttals.
  • Chapter Two: On Legal Occurrence (al-Bab al-Thani fi al-Wuqu'): Addresses "The First Issue: On the occurrence of innovative divorce" (al-Mas'alah al-Ula fi Wuqu' al-Talaq al-Bid'i). It reviews the position of the majority, who uphold its legal execution, and the position of those who reject it, elaborating the four evidentiary points drawn by the majority from the hadith of Abdullah ibn Umar, alongside the answers and counter-arguments of the dissenting scholars.

The surviving text concludes after this first issue in Chapter Two; the author did not complete the subsequent issues he planned to address.

Manuscript and Publication

The text is preserved in an autograph manuscript in the Library of the Holy Mosque in Mecca (Maktabat al-Haram al-Makki, MS 4682), which was left as scattered sheets with supplementary pages marked for insertion into specific places. It was edited by Muhammad Uzayr Shams and published as part of the legal treatises volume (Majmu Rasa'il al-Fiqh) within the project Athar al-Mu'allimi.

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