a) When the marriage is publicly announced and attested by two witnesses, its validity is undisputed.

b) If it lacks both witnesses and public announcement, its invalidity is likewise undisputed.

c) If it is only announced, with no witnesses present, it is still valid. This is the view preferred by Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn, who maintains that there is no basis in the Quran or the Sunnah for making witnesses a prerequisite for marriage, and that a contract concluded with witnesses alone, but without public proclamation, is not valid. He states, “What is certain is that a marriage accompanied by public announcement is valid, even if two witnesses are not present.”

Scholarly disagreement
The jurists have differed over whether witnessing is a condition for the validity of a marriage:

• The majority—among them the three imams Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad, and likewise ʿUmar, ʿAlī, Ibn ʿAbbās, Saʿīd ibn al-Musayyib, Jābir ibn Zayd, al-Ḥasan, al-Nakhaʿī, Qatādah, al-Thawrī, and al-Awzāʿī—require it. They do so to safeguard lineage and to forestall denial and dispute, citing the report narrated by al-Dāraquṭnī from ʿĀʾishah in which the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said, “No marriage is valid without a guardian and two upright witnesses.”

• Imam Mālik—and a narration from Imam Aḥmad that Shaykh al-Islām favored—hold that once the marriage is publicly announced, witnesses are not essential. They also contest the authenticity of the foregoing hadith; Ibn al-Mundhir said, “No report that mentions two witnesses is sound.”

Shaykh Taqī al-Dīn further stated that in all four schools it is not a condition of validity that witnesses hear the woman’s permission before the contract; if the guardian simply says, “She has authorized me,” the marriage may be concluded.

Nevertheless, the Ministry of Justice in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has required marriage registrars to secure witnesses as a precautionary measure and to avert disputes—an opinion found within the schools of al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad.