that the claim of definitive permissibility rests on its being explicitly mentioned in the Noble Qur’an. Even if the wording of that verse is indeed decisive, its import is not decisive for two reasons:

1. It may be interpreted as referring to lawful enjoyment within a valid, permanent marriage.
2. The verse is couched in general terms, and every general text is, by its nature, open to conjecture.

Furthermore, al-Tirmidhi reports from Ibn ʿAbbās that he said: “Temporary marriage remained permissible until the revelation of the verse, ‘except with their wives or those whom their right hands possess’ (23:6).” Ibn ʿAbbās continued, “Every form of intimacy other than these two is forbidden.” This indicates that the prohibition is grounded in the Qur’an itself; thus a text whose wording is definitive abrogates another text whose wording is likewise definitive.

Should someone contend that the earlier permissibility is also definitive because the entire community initially concurred upon it, we reply: the community likewise concurred, in principle, on its prohibition. The only disagreement concerns whether that prohibition was meant to be permanent. The fact that the clause of perpetuity is conjectural does not render the prohibition itself conjectural. Hence the ruling that abrogated the unanimously accepted permissibility is the unanimously accepted prohibition, qualified by a conjectural clause—namely, that it is everlasting. The abrogating text is therefore definitive, satisfying the principle affirmed by the majority of legal theorists that only a definitive ruling can abrogate another definitive ruling.