chain of transmission that he prohibited it. However, those Kūfan scholars who considered it valid held that its only defect was the failure to specify the dower, whereas a marriage is valid without a specified dower. Those who deemed it invalid therefore advanced two grounds:

The first is that it makes each woman’s conjugal rights the dower of the other, thereby entailing shared entitlement to those rights. This is the view of al-Shāfiʿī and many of Ahmad’s followers. Some of these scholars consider it invalid unless a dower is specified, since specifying one eliminates that shared entitlement.

Others consider it invalid only if it is expressly stated: “Each woman’s conjugal rights constitute the other’s dower.” Without that statement, the conjugal rights are not necessarily designated as the dower. Still others consider it invalid in all cases, as explicitly stated in a hadith reported from the Prophet in the Sunan collections. These three views are found within Ahmad’s school and elsewhere.

The second ground is that it is invalid because it stipulates that there shall be no dower. There is a difference between leaving the dower unspecified and stipulating a dower, for this kind of marriage is among the exclusive prerogatives of the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. Accordingly, if something both parties know to be forbidden—such as wine or a pig—is specified as the dower, the marriage is invalid. This is the view of some of Mālik’s followers and one of the two positions within Ahmad’s school. It accords more closely with the apparent meaning of the Quran and with analogical reasoning based on established legal principles.

Likewise, marriage to a woman who is pregnant or observing a waiting period as a result of fornication is invalid according to Mālik’s school.