then this stipulation is valid by agreement of the jurists. Thus, they agree that a stipulation reducing the entitlements ordinarily arising from the contract is valid, but disagree here about stipulating additional entitlements, as I have explained to you.

Abū Hanīfa’s position is that a man has no right to annul a marriage on the grounds of a defect or a contractual stipulation.

As for the dower, there is agreement that it may exceed or fall below the customary dower for a woman of comparable standing. Likewise, most of the early Muslims—or many of them—and the jurists of hadith, as well as Mālik according to one of the two reports from him, permit restrictions on the husband’s rights: the wife may stipulate that he not move her from her town or her home. They also permit granting her rights beyond those conferred by an unqualified contract, so that he binds himself not to marry another woman alongside her or take a concubine. A group of the early Muslims, Abū Hanīfa, al-Shāfiʿī, and Mālik according to the other report hold that such a stipulation is invalid. According to Abū Hanīfa and al-Shāfiʿī, however, it does affect the specification of the dower.

Sound analogical reasoning in this matter, consistent with the principles of Ahmad and other jurists of hadith, is that stipulating either an addition to or a reduction in the entitlements arising from an unqualified contract is permissible, unless Islamic law prohibits it. Thus, if additions to and reductions in the property or benefit forming the subject of the contract are as I have explained, then the same applies to additions to and reductions in the rights of ownership established by the contract. Thus, if he stipulates that the purchaser emancipate the slave, make the property an endowment benefiting the seller or someone else, or use the property to discharge a debt he owes