Allah has required of Muslims in their marriages.

Ahmad ibn Hanbal and other leading hadith scholars said: “Nothing has been authentically established from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, concerning having witnesses to marriage.”

Had he made this obligatory, that obligation could only have been known through the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. It would have been among the rulings that had to be made known and publicly proclaimed. Stipulating the dowry would have a stronger claim; yet the Quran, the Sunnah, and scholarly consensus establish that its amount need not be specified in the marriage contract.

Had he publicly proclaimed this requirement, it would have been transmitted from the Companions. They would not have neglected to preserve knowledge indispensable to Muslims generally, for every incentive and motive favors transmitting it, as does the one who commands its preservation. They preserved his prohibition of shighār marriage and marriage contracted by someone in the state of pilgrimage consecration, and similar matters that occur infrequently. What, then, of marriage without witnesses? If Allah and His Messenger had forbidden and invalidated it, how could no explicit statement from the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, have been preserved concerning it?

Indeed, even if something concerning this had been transmitted through solitary reports, it would have been rejected by those who take that position on such reports. This is among the matters that concern everyone most widely—far more widely than many other rulings. It is therefore inconceivable that no Muslim marriage should be valid without witnesses, when Muslims have concluded marriage contracts in numbers known only to the Lord of the heavens.

It is thus clear that making witnesses alone a condition is unquestionably invalid. This is why those who stipulate witnesses hold inconsistent positions, with an inconsistency that reveals the unsoundness of their underlying principle. None of their positions withstands scrutiny against the standard of the revealed law: some of them permit marriage witnessed by two sinful men, whereas, even for testimony they do not consider obligatory, Allah has commanded that two upright men be called as witnesses. How much more, then, should this apply to witnessing that is obligatory!