but since immediate succession has a conjunction specifically assigned to it—fa—thumma came to indicate the meaning distinctive to it: an interval. Otherwise, if a man said to a wife with whom he had consummated the marriage, “You are divorced, then divorced,” or, “You are divorced and immediately divorced again,” there would be no difference between these two statements in this case.

The second answer is that the interval indicated by thumma concerns the meaning, not the wording. If someone says, “Zayd came, then ʿAmr,” this is a single, connected statement. It cannot be treated as though he had paused and then said, “ʿAmr.” Thus, anyone who maintains that saying, “You are divorced, then divorced,” is equivalent to pausing and then saying, “Divorced,” is mistaken. At most, it is equivalent to saying, “You are divorced by a divorce that will be followed, after an interval, by another divorce.” This does not prevent all the divorces from being subject to the condition, whether the condition precedes or follows them.

If, then, al-Shāfiʿī and these scholars hold that saying, “You are divorced, then divorced, then divorced if you enter the house,” is equivalent, in the case of a wife whose marriage has been consummated, to saying, “You are divorced and immediately divorced again and immediately divorced again if you enter the house,” or, “You are divorced, and divorced, and divorced if you enter the house”; and likewise hold this concerning the statement, “You are all divorced, then you are all divorced if you enter the house,” with the condition applying to all the clauses—how can his school be credited with the view that conjunction by a word indicating sequence requires restricting the condition to those it immediately follows, to the exclusion of those mentioned earlier? Why was it not said here: “If divorce has explicitly taken effect through the first two pronouncements, and nothing has been established that changes this, then it is necessary to