it took place during the waiting period or before the authorities, it is annulled. Both these opinions are attributed to Mālik and are also related from 'Umar ibn al-Khattāb—may Allah Most High be pleased with him. It is also related from him that if her husband returns after she has remarried, he is given the choice between reclaiming his wife and taking her dowry. This, and Allah knows best, applies so long as the new husband has not consummated the marriage. It resembles the case of someone who establishes his ownership of an item still in the purchaser’s possession: he may choose either to reclaim his property or to take its price. This analogy, however, is far-fetched. An owner may sell his property, so he may ratify its sale and take the price; a husband, however, has no right to marry his wife to another man, so he cannot ratify her marriage and take the dowry.

Mālik mentions in his Muwatta’ that the people he encountered rejected what was related from 'Umar ibn al-Khattāb concerning this matter. They did not disagree that if the husband returns after the new husband has consummated the marriage, he has no claim to her. Nor did they disagree that if it emerges that he died after the new husband consummated the marriage, she does not inherit from him and is not separated from the husband who consummated the marriage with her. Success comes from Allah.

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If his wife is restored to him—even after she has remarried, according to the opinion that he loses his claim to her only upon consummation—she returns under the original marriage bond. He retains his full allowance of divorces, or whatever remains of it if he divorced her before going missing, because the entire judgment is overturned once his circumstances become known and his survival is established.

If, however, she is not restored to him because he has lost his claim to her and the judgment based on the apparent circumstances is upheld—whether upon the expiry of the prescribed periods, her remarriage, or consummation, according to the disagreement already mentioned—then the separation imposed upon him by that judgment counts as one divorce. If he subsequently marries her, he has two divorces remaining.

There is disagreement over when that divorce takes effect. One opinion is that it takes effect upon consummation or upon the marriage contract, according to the differing views on this point. Another is that it takes effect on the day she becomes free to marry, with the subsequent contract or consummation revealing that it had already taken effect.

The practical consequence of this disagreement arises when a husband has divorced her twice before contracting marriage, then goes missing; an appointed term is set, she observes her waiting period and remarries, and her first husband returns after the new husband has consummated the marriage. Does this husband make her lawful again for her returning husband? Those who hold that the third divorce takes effect when the second husband consummates the marriage maintain that only a subsequent husband can make her lawful again for the first husband,