was taken in marriage by another man who, after consummation, divorced her; the first husband then married her again. The question arises: does she return to him with two pronouncements still remaining, as ʿUmar and other Companions, as well as Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and—according to the well-known report—Aḥmad, all maintain? Or is that initial pronouncement annulled so that she now counts as fully divorced three times? This latter view is held by Ibn ʿAbbās, Ibn ʿUmar, Abū Ḥanīfah, and another report from ʿUmar, on the basis that the intercourse of the second husband erases anything less than three pronouncements, just as it erased the prohibition resulting from three.

The first opinion rests on the principle that the second husband’s consummation merely terminates the state of prohibition established by three divorces; that barrier alone is lifted. A woman divorced fewer than three times was never forbidden to her first husband, so the second husband’s intercourse does not remove any further pronouncements. This was the ruling issued by Abū Hurayrah.

ʿUmar said to him, “Had you delivered any other verdict, I would have had you severely beaten.”

Abū Hurayrah also issued subtle legal opinions alongside scholars such as Ibn ʿAbbās. The Companions and those who came after them relied on Abū Hurayrah’s narrations in many matters that run counter to analogy, just as they all acted upon his report that the Prophet ﷺ said: “A woman is not to be married together with her paternal aunt or with her maternal aunt.” (1)

Likewise, Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, and others acted upon his hadith, “Whoever eats forgetfully while fasting should nonetheless complete his fast.” (2) Although analogy, according to Abū Ḥanīfah, would lead to the conclusion that the fast is broken, he abandoned analogy out of deference to Abū Hurayrah’s report.