Permissible divorce in accordance with the Sunnah consists of pronouncing a single divorce, then either leaving her until her waiting period expires and she is no longer his wife, or taking her back during the waiting period.

If he pronounces three divorces, or pronounces a second or third divorce during that same period of purity, this is forbidden, and whoever does so is an innovator according to most scholars, including Mālik, Abū Hanīfah, and Ahmad, according to the well-known position reported from him. The same applies if he pronounces a second and third divorce before taking her back or entering into a new marriage contract, according to Mālik, Ahmad—on the apparent position of his school—and others. However, does this count as one divorce or three? There are two views.

One view is that all three divorces take effect. This is the position of al-Shāfiʿī and the well-known position of the other three imams.

The other view is that only one divorce takes effect. This is the view of many earlier and later scholars, as well as a group of scholars within the schools of Mālik and Abū Hanīfah. This view is stronger. It is authentically reported in Sahīh Muslim that Ibn ʿAbbās said:

“During the lifetime of the Messenger of Allah, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, during Abū Bakr’s time, and during the early part of ʿUmar’s caliphate, three divorces counted as one.”

In Imam Ahmad’s Musnad, Ibn ʿAbbās reports through a good chain of transmission:

“Rukānah ibn ʿAbd Yazīd divorced his wife three times in a single sitting. The Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, said, ‘It counts as one.’”

No one has transmitted from the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, through an established chain of transmission, that he enforced three divorces against someone who pronounced them all at once. As for the report about Rukānah which relates that he divorced her definitively, and that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, “asked him,” saying, “Did you intend no more than one divorce?”—it is weak according to the leading hadith scholars. Ahmad, al-Bukhārī, Abū ʿUbayd, and Ibn Hazm declared it weak because its narrators were not established as possessing integrity and accuracy. Ahmad explained that the authentic account of Rukānah’s hadith is that he divorced her three times and the Prophet counted it as one. We have discussed this at length elsewhere. And Allah knows best.