like al-Shāfiʿī’s fixing of maintenance at a definite amount, since a woman needs both and the contract makes both obligatory. Fixing such definite amounts is considered weak by jurists generally and is far removed from the import of the Quran, the Sunnah, and sound reasoning. Al-Shāfiʿī fixed maintenance only as a consistent application of the principle we previously mentioned from him: that uncertainty must be eliminated from all contracts, by analogy with the prohibition of sales involving undue uncertainty. Accordingly, he assigned a definite amount to the maintenance due under a marriage contract. Attention has already been drawn to this principle.

Likewise, according to jurists generally, an unqualified marriage contract entails that the husband be free from penile amputation and impotence. According to the majority, it likewise entails that the wife be free of impediments to intercourse, such as vaginal occlusion, and free from insanity, leprosy, and leukoderma. It also entails that she be free of defects that impair full marital intimacy—such as the discharge of impure substances from him or her and the like—according to one of two positions in Ahmad’s school and others; it does not, however, entail beauty or anything similar. It also entails that the man be a suitable match, but nothing beyond that.

Furthermore, if either spouse stipulated that the other possess a desired quality, such as wealth, beauty, virginity, or the like, the stipulation would be valid and, if that quality proved absent, the stipulating party would be entitled to annul the marriage. This is the sounder of the two reports from Ahmad, the sounder of the two positions among al-Shāfiʿī’s followers, and the apparent position of Mālik’s school. Under the other report, the stipulating party has no right to annul the marriage unless the condition concerns free status or religion. Under this report, there are two positions concerning a condition of lineage, regardless of whether it is the woman who stipulates a quality in the man or the man who stipulates one in the woman. Indeed, by agreement among jurists of Ahmad’s school and others, a woman’s stipulation concerning a man carries even greater weight. What some of Ahmad’s followers have stated to the contrary has no basis.

Likewise, if a stipulation concerned one of the attributes to which a spouse is entitled under an unqualified contract, such as if—