in righteousness, as well as the four imams and other Muslim scholars, together with each group’s supporting evidence, elsewhere.

The scholars disagreed concerning someone who swears by Allah, or invokes divorce, zihār, a declaration of unlawfulness, or a vow, that he will not do something, but then does it, forgetting his oath or unaware that it is the very thing his oath concerns.

Has he broken his oath, as held by Abū Hanīfah, Mālik, and Ahmad, and according to one of al-Shāfi‘ī’s two views and one report from Ahmad? Or has he not broken his oath in either case, as held by the Meccan scholars, according to al-Shāfi‘ī’s other view and the second report from Ahmad? Or should a distinction be drawn between oaths invoking divorce or emancipation and other oaths, according to the third report from Ahmad? This last position was preferred by al-Qādī, al-Khiraqī, and other followers of Ahmad, and by al-Qaffāl among the followers of al-Shāfi‘ī.

Likewise, what if he believed that his wife had become irrevocably divorced through his doing what his oath concerned, but then discovered that she had not? There are two views on this. Similarly, if he swears by divorce or otherwise that something is as he believes it to be, but it turns out otherwise, there are three views, as mentioned above.

If he swears to something about which he is uncertain, and it then proves true, there are two views. According to Mālik, divorce takes effect; according to the majority, it does not. The latter is the well-known position in Ahmad’s school. However, Ahmad’s explicit statement, as reported by Harb, is to withhold judgment on this question. Two juristic views may therefore be derived concerning it, just as there are two views concerning whether someone has broken his oath if he swears that he will do such-and-such that day and the day passes, or he is unsure whether he has done it.

They agreed that an oath is interpreted according to the oath-taker’s intention when his wording admits that intention and it does not conflict with the apparent meaning—or when it does conflict with that meaning but he is being wronged. They disagreed over whether account should be taken of the reason for