a work on this issue by one of the later scholars, written after the fifth century AH, whose purpose was to devise a stratagem to prevent divorce from taking effect.

For this reason, they formulated it as follows: “If my divorce takes effect against you, you are divorced three times beforehand.” For if he said, “If I divorce you, you are divorced three times beforehand,” this wording would not serve his stratagem, although both formulations involve the same circularity.

The reason is that if a man says to his wife, “If I divorce you, my slave is free,” or, “you are divorced,” he breaks this oath only by pronouncing an immediate divorce after taking it, or by subsequently making a divorce conditional upon an event that then occurs. Both an immediate divorce and a conditional divorce whose condition has been fulfilled constitute an act of divorcing. If, however, he had made her divorce conditional before taking this oath, and the condition was fulfilled afterward, the mere fulfilment of the condition and the resulting divorce would not constitute an act of divorcing. Such an act must proceed from the husband, whereas a divorce taking effect through a condition fulfilled by someone else is not an act on his part.

But if he says, “If my divorce takes effect against you,” this encompasses an immediate divorce, a divorce made conditional after this statement, and a divorce taking effect afterward through a condition stipulated before it.

They therefore framed the case using the wording, “If my divorce takes effect against you.” Thus, when a man swears an oath of divorce not to do something, they tell him: “Say, ‘If my divorce takes effect against you, you are divorced three times beforehand.’” He says this, and they then tell him: “Now do what you swore not to do, for no divorce will take effect in your case.”

This is the “Surayjian stratagem,” rejected by the general body of Muslims and known with certainty not to belong to the law with which Allah sent Muhammad, may Allah bless him and grant him peace. It is generally the practice of swearing oaths of divorce that has given it currency and driven many people to resort to it. Were it not for that, no one would adopt it, for only rarely would a rational person deliberately seek to close off the possibility of divorce for himself.