“There is no blame upon you if you divorce women before consummating the marriage with them or fixing a dowry for them.” [al-Baqara: 236]
[al-Baqara: 236] The Sunnah, through the hadith of Birwa bint Wāshiq, and the consensus of the scholars likewise establish that a marriage contract may be concluded without fixing the dowry. By their consensus, a woman is entitled to the dowry customary for a woman of her standing if her husband consummates the marriage with her. She is also entitled to it if he dies, according to the hadith jurists and the Kufans who follow the hadith of Birwa bint Wāshiq; this is also one of al-Shāfiī’s two positions.

It is well known that such a dowry is based on approximation rather than exact specification. If exact specification were required for the dowry, marriage could not validly be contracted without it—just as a worker may not be hired before his wage has been made known. Ahmad narrated in the Musnad from Abū Saīd al-Khudrī—may Allah be pleased with him—that “the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—forbade hiring a worker before his wage had been made known to him, as well as touch-based sales, fraudulent bidding, and sales determined by throwing a pebble.” Thus, the Sacred Law permits marriage before the dowry has been fixed, whereas hiring is permissible only when the wage has been specified. This demonstrates the distinction between the two.

The reason is that the subject matter of the marriage contract—namely, the right to marital intimacy—is not precisely delimited; rather, it is governed by customary practice. The other side of the exchange is therefore treated in the same manner, for the dowry is not the primary object of the marriage contract but merely an ancillary gift. It thus resembles fruit that passes as an appurtenance to the trees when they are sold before signs of the fruit’s ripeness appear.

For this reason, when the delegation of Hawāzin came to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and he gave them the choice between the captives and the property, they chose the captives. He told them, “I am going to stand and address the people, so say: ‘We ask the Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—to intercede for us with the Muslims, and we ask the Muslims to intercede for us with the Messenger of Allah.’” He then stood and addressed the people, saying, “I have returned their captives to these people. Whoever is willing to relinquish his share freely may do so; and whoever prefers compensation, we shall give him ten young she-camels for every captive, from the first spoils Allah grants