He was also asked—may Allah Most High have mercy on him—about khulʿ (marital dissolution in return for compensation):

“Is it a divorce that counts as one of the three? And is it a condition that neither the wording nor the intention of divorce be involved?”

He replied—may Allah Most High have mercy on him:

There is a well-known disagreement on this issue among the early and later scholars. The apparent position of Imam Ahmad and his followers is that it constitutes an irrevocable separation and an annulment of the marriage, and does not count as one of the three divorces. Thus, even if a man were to conclude khulʿ with his wife ten times, he could marry her again under a new marriage contract without her first marrying another husband. This is also one of al-Shāfiʿī’s two positions. Some of his followers adopted it and argued in its support; others argued in its support without adopting it.

This is the position of the majority of the hadith jurists, such as Ishāq ibn Rāhawayh, Abū Thawr, Dāwūd, Ibn al-Mundhir and Ibn Khuzaymah. It is authentically established from Ibn ʿAbbās and his followers, such as Tāwūs and ʿIkrimah.

The second position is that it constitutes an irrevocable divorce that counts as one of the three. This is the view of many of the early scholars, and is the position of Abū Hanīfah and Mālik, as well as al-Shāfiʿī’s other position—which is said to be his later position. It is also the other position reported from Ahmad.

This view is attributed to ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, ʿAlī and Ibn Masʿūd. However, Ahmad and other leading hadith scholars, such as Ibn al-Mundhir, Ibn Khuzaymah, al-Bayhaqī and others, judged the reports from these Companions to be weak. They authenticated only Ibn ʿAbbās’s statement that it is an annulment, not a divorce.

As for al-Shāfiʿī and others, they said: “We do not know the standing of the person who narrated this from ʿUthmān: is he trustworthy or not?” Thus, they did not authenticate what was reported from the Companions; rather, they acknowledged that they did not know whether it was authentic.