866 – ʿĀʾishah (may Allah be pleased with her) related: “A man divorced his wife three times, whereupon she married another man. That second husband then divorced her before consummating the marriage. Her first husband wanted to take her back and asked the Messenger of Allah (peace and blessings be upon him) about it. He said, ‘No—she is not lawful for you until the other husband has tasted of her sweetness what the first one tasted.’” Agreed upon, and this wording is Muslim’s (1).

Explanation of the ḥadith’s vocabulary:
– “A man”: Rifāʿah ibn Shimūl al-Quraẓī; the name Rifāʿah is pronounced with a short i after the r and a light f.
– “The second man”: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn al-Zubayr ibn Bāṭiyā, also of the Quraẓah clan; al-Zubayr is vocalized with a fatḥah on the z and a kasrah on the b.
– “He enters upon her”: here “entry” means actual intercourse, not mere seclusion.
– “Tastes”: the verb dhāqa–yadhūqu originally means to test flavor; taste is the faculty by which the gustatory qualities of substances are perceived through the sensory apparatus in the mouth, whose center is the tongue. Al-Muḥīṭ says: the basic meaning of dhawq is to recognize flavor, and then the term was widened to denote any kind of experience; this is the sense intended in the ḥadith.
– “ʿUsaylatuhā”: with ḍamma on the ʿayn, fatḥah on the sīn, followed by a yāʾ, is the diminutive of ʿaslah (honey). The Arabic word for honey may be treated as masculine or feminine; therefore, in the diminutive the feminine marker tāʾ is returned. Al-Nihāyah states: The delight of intercourse is likened to the taste of honey, so the expression “taste” was borrowed for it, and