If someone asks: “If gestation and weaning cannot exceed thirty months, and the maximum duration of pregnancy is two years, must the nursing period then be six months, even though this is insufficient to sustain infants’ bodies and they need to nurse for longer?”

The answer is that six months may be the minimum nursing period, and that, if an infant is fed with due care, it may no longer need nursing after six months. This is the apparent meaning of the statement reported from Ibn ʿAbbās: “If a woman gives birth after nine months, twenty-one months of nursing suffice; if she gives birth after seven months, twenty-three months of nursing suffice; and if she gives birth after six months, then two full years are required. For Allah Most High says: ‘His gestation and weaning take thirty months.’ [Al-Ahqāf: 15]” By the same reasoning, if she gives birth after two years, the child’s nursing period is six months.

It is also possible that Allah Most High initially set the combined duration of gestation and weaning at thirty months, and no more, as stated in the verse we have quoted. This allows for the possibility that the nursing period may be as short as six months. Allah Most High then extended the nursing period to two full years, saying:

“His weaning is in two years.” [Luqmān: 14]

And:

“Mothers shall nurse their children for two full years.” [Al-Baqara: 233]

The duration of pregnancy remained as stated in the first verse: He did not remove it from the thirty-month limit, but excluded the nursing period from that limit when pregnancy lasts longer than six months.

The first answer seems more evident to me, because it supports what is reported from Ibn ʿAbbās. Following his reasoning, we therefore say that the minimum nursing period is six months and its maximum is two years, just as the minimum duration of pregnancy is six months and its maximum is two years. A woman may reduce the two years of nursing for her child to as little as six months, provided that the combined duration of gestation and nursing does not fall short of thirty months.

It has also been said that the four-year term was set for the missing man only because it was unknown in which of the four directions he had travelled. This explanation has no merit. If he does not return before the term expires, she observes the waiting period prescribed for a widow—according to one view, with mourning, and according to another, without it. She may then marry if she wishes, in accordance with what is reported on this matter from ʿUmar ibn al-Khattāb, ʿUthmān ibn ʿAffān, ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿUmar, and ʿAbd Allāh ibn ʿAbbās, may Allah be pleased with them, and no one disagreed