made in contention and anger.” However, Ahmad and Abū ʿUbayd held back from applying this to manumission because of the distinction I have mentioned. Ahmad also objected to this. As for divorce, no transmitted report concerning it had reached Abū Thawr, so he withheld judgment, although he considered it analogous to manumission. He feared, however, that he might be opposing the consensus.

The “correct view” is that disagreement encompasses all these cases—divorce and otherwise—for reasons we shall mention. Even if no specific dissenting view concerning divorce itself had been transmitted, the ruling of those Companions who prescribed expiation for an oath involving manumission would, by implication, indicate the ruling for an oath involving divorce. For if expiation suffices for a vow of manumission—which is an act of devotion—when it takes the form of an oath, then an oath involving divorce, which is not an act of devotion, must either be discharged by expiation or entail no obligation at all, according to those who hold that a vow involving something other than obedience entails no obligation.

Thus, his statement, “If I do such-and-such, you are divorced,” would be equivalent to saying, “Then I am obliged to divorce you,” just as, according to those Companions and those who agreed with them, his statement, “Then my slaves are free,” was equivalent to saying, “Then I am obliged to set them free.”

Nevertheless, to this very day, no statement from any of the Companions concerning oaths involving divorce has reached me. This—and Allah knows best—is because such oaths had not yet arisen in their time. People only introduced them during the time of the Successors and those who came after them, and the Successors and later generations differed over them.

Thus, “one of the two views” is that divorce takes effect through such an oath, as explained above. The “second view” is that divorce does not necessarily take effect.

ʿAbd al-Razzāq related from Ibn Jurayj, from Ibn Tāwūs, from his father, that he