Section Three
When Does the Expiation Erase the Breach, and How Much Does It Cover?

With regard to the moment at which an expiation removes and effaces the breach of an oath, the jurists disagreed.

al-Shāfiʿī said: If a person offers expiation either after violating the oath or before doing so, the sin is erased.

Abū Ḥanīfah held: The breach is not removed except by an expiation that comes after the violation, never before it. Both opinions are reported from Mālik.

The basis of their disagreement lies in two matters:

1. A difference in the wording transmitted from the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—who said, “Whoever swears an oath and then sees something better, let him do what is better and expiate for his oath.” Some narrate it in exactly this order, while others transmit: “let him expiate for his oath and do what is better.” The outward sense of the first wording permits expiation before the breach, whereas the second suggests that it is to be offered after the breach.

2. Their divergence over whether it is valid to discharge an obligatory right before its time has arrived. It is apparent that expiation becomes obligatory only after the breach, just as zakāh is due only after the lapse of a full lunar year.

Someone might reply that expiation becomes incumbent as soon as one intends and resolves to break the oath—just as with the expiation for ẓihār—and that, from this standpoint, no difference should arise.

The underlying conceptual cause of the dispute is whether the expiation is viewed as removing a breach that has already occurred or as preventing it from occurring. Whoever saw it as preventive allowed it to be offered beforehand; whoever saw it as curative allowed it only after the breach had taken place.

Multiplicity of Expiations When Oaths Are Numerous

So far as I know, the scholars agree that if someone swears a single oath concerning several distinct matters, only one expiation is required. Likewise—and, as far as I am aware, without dissent—if he swears multiple oaths concerning a single matter, the expiations owed equal the number of oaths, just as when he swears several oaths about several matters.

They did differ when a person swears many times about one and the same specific matter. Some held that only one expiation is due; others maintained that each oath demands its own expiation unless the swearer intended mere emphasis—this is Mālik’s view. A third group said that only one expiation is required unless the intention was to add sternness and gravity (taghlīẓ).

The cause of their disagreement is whether multiplicity is generated by the sheer number of oaths or by the diversity of their form. Those who attached it to number said a separate expiation is due each time the oath is repeated. Those who attached it to diversity of form said that, in this case, only one expiation is due.

They also disagreed when a person, in a single oath, cites more than two of the Divine attributes. Does the number of expiations match the number of attributes invoked, or is only one expiation required? Mālik held that the expiation must equal the number of attributes, so whoever swore by “the All-Hearing, the All-Knowing, the All-Wise” would, according to him, owe three expiations. Others said that if he intended