that signifies it; it is not restricted to the terms inkāh and tazwīj (giving in marriage). This is the position of the majority of scholars, including Abū Hanīfah and Mālik, and one of the two views within Ahmad’s school. Indeed, his explicit statements support only this position. The other view—that marriage may be concluded only through the terms inkāh and tazwīj—is that of Abū ‘Abd Allāh ibn Hāmid and his followers, such as Judge Abū Ya‘lā and those who followed him.

The early scholars of Ahmad’s school, and the majority of its adherents, did not hold this latter view. Ahmad explicitly stated on several occasions that if a man says, “I have freed my slave woman and made her emancipation her dower,” the marriage is concluded, although neither inkāh nor tazwīj appears in this wording. Hence Ibn ‘Aqīl and others observed that this indicates that marriage is not restricted to a particular expression.

Ibn Hāmid, however, consistently applied his own position, saying that the man must also say, “And I have married her.” Judge Abū Ya‘lā treated this as an exception to analogy, allowing marriage in this instance without the terms inkāh and tazwīj. Yet Imam Ahmad’s principles and explicit statements contradict this approach. One of his principles is that contracts are concluded through any words or actions that indicate their intended purpose; he does not regard them as restricted to prescribed formulas. Another of his principles is that indirect wording, when accompanied by contextual indications, is equivalent to explicit wording and requires no declaration of intent. He therefore applied this principle to divorce, accusations of unchastity, and other matters.

Those followers of al-Shāfi‘ī who held that marriage may be concluded only through the terms inkāh and tazwīj argued: “This is because anything other than these two expressions is indirect wording, and indirect wording does not establish