maintenance payable by him after this. If the first judge acts in this way, he has thereby issued a judicial ruling, according to the sounder of the two scholarly views.

Whenever a judge concludes a contract or effects an annulment in a matter open to independent juristic judgment, no other judge may overturn his decision.

He—may Allah have mercy on him—was asked about a man who said to his father-in-law:

“If you bring me my document and release me from the obligations it records, your daughter is divorced three times.”

The father brought him a document other than his own, and the husband tore it up without knowing whether it was his document or not. The wife’s father then said:

“Bear witness concerning him that my daughter is under my guardianship, and bear witness that I have released him from the obligations recorded in her document.”

He did not specify what the document contained. He then waited a while, and the wife’s father came in the presence of the witnesses and asked him:

“What did you say, husband?”

The husband replied: “Bear witness that this man’s daughter is divorced three times.”

The husband subsequently claimed that this explicit pronouncement of divorce had been based on the assumption that the earlier release was valid. Does the divorce take effect or not?

He answered:

His first statement was conditional upon being released from his obligations. If the father did not release him, the divorce did not take effect. His second statement, however, was an acknowledgment based on the assumption that the first divorce had taken effect. If the first divorce had not taken effect, then the second statement did not bring about any divorce.