the advance dower—she is entitled to demand it from him before consummation. As for the portion deferred until a specified date—which people call the deferred dower—it has become customary nowadays among the unattached (1) to marry a woman for a dower comprising an advance portion and a deferred portion. The two parties generally agree to this at the proposal stage, before the contract. Then, when the marriage contract is concluded, they state the entire dower without qualification, making no mention of either an advance or a deferred portion.

According to the great majority of the salaf, a condition agreed upon before a contract has the same status as one stipulated concurrently with it (2). This is the well-known position reported from Mālik, Ahmad, and others, and it is indicated by the Quran and the sunnah.

If he marries her for an advance portion and a deferred portion without specifying a date, the jurists have differed over the validity of this specification. Most of the salaf held it valid, because the benefit given in exchange is not deferred until a specified date, unlike the usufruct under a lease.

They then differed as to when the deferred portion becomes due. Many of them—or most of them—said that it becomes due when the marriage ends through death, divorce, or the like. This is the position of Ahmad and others. Accordingly, most women nowadays are not entitled to demand the deferred portion of the dower from their husbands until the marriage ends. This is the correct view, for the man did not enter the marriage on the understanding that it was immediately payable, like the advance portion or like prices and hire fees that have fallen due. Nor did the woman enter it on the understanding that she could collect it as she would an immediately payable advance dower, purchase price, or hire fee. Rather, she demands its immediate payment only when seeking to harm the man in pursuit of some corrupt objective she wishes to accomplish, or to drive him to divorce her,