Whoever has intercourse with a woman whom he owns becomes permanently barred from marrying her mothers and her daughters, and she in turn becomes forbidden to his fathers and to his sons. The same ruling applies to a woman with whom he had intercourse under a mistaken assumption of permissibility (shubhah) as far as he himself is concerned; some jurists add that it applies with respect to her as well. This, however, does not extend to a woman with whom he merely committed fornication. Mere physical contact motivated by desire is not treated like intercourse, according to the sounder view.
If one woman who is permanently forbidden to him is mixed in among the women of a large village, he may marry from that village, because the women are too numerous to be individually identified; this permission does not hold when the women are few and specifically known. Should a cause of permanent prohibition arise after a marriage has been contracted, the marriage is immediately severed—for example, if someone were to have intercourse with his father’s wife under shubhah.
It is unlawful to combine in marriage a woman together with her sister, her paternal aunt, or her maternal aunt, whether the kinship is by blood or by nursing. If both are included in one marriage contract, the entire contract is void; if the contracts are successive, the later one alone is void. Any pair that may not be combined in marriage may likewise not be combined in intercourse through ownership, though it remains permissible to own them both. If he has intercourse with one of the two, the other becomes forbidden until the first becomes unlawful to him through sale, manumission, kitābah (a manumission contract), and the like—not merely by her menstruation or by his state of ihram; the same applies, according to the stronger opinion, when she is pledged as collateral.
If he first acquires a woman as property and then marries her sister, or the reverse, only the one taken in marriage remains lawful to him. A male slave may have only two wives, while a free man may have no more than four. If someone marries five women at once, the entire contract is void; if he marries them successively, the fifth alone is void. Both the sister and the fifth woman become lawful to him once the waiting period following an irrevocable divorce (ʿiddah bāʾin) begins, but not during the waiting period of a revocable divorce.
When a free man pronounces three divorces, or a slave pronounces two, the woman is not lawful to him again until she marries another husband and that husband fully consummates the marriage by vaginal penetration of the glans—or its equivalent—while in a state of erection, with a valid marriage contract, and provided he is physically capable of intercourse, not a child; this is the authoritative position. If the second husband marries her on the condition that he will divorce her once he has intercourse with her, or that the marriage will automatically end, the contract itself is invalid, and there is a difference of opinion concerning the effectiveness of any subsequent divorce.
Section
A man may not marry a woman whom he owns in whole or in part; if he later acquires ownership of his wife, or even part of her, the marriage is annulled. Likewise, a woman may not marry someone whom she owns, in full or in part. A free man may not marry another person’s slave woman unless certain conditions are met: first, that he does not already have a free wife who is suitable for conjugal relations—some extend this to include one who is unsuitable; second, that he cannot afford to marry a free woman who is suitable—some extend this to include one who is unsuitable as well. If he is able to marry a free woman who is merely absent, then it becomes permissible for him to marry a slave woman provided that