Our purpose is to cite statements of the Companions that clarify the meaning of an oath in the Book of Allah, the Sunnah of His Messenger, and their own usage. In Sunan Abī Dāwūd, it is reported:

Muhammad ibn al-Minhāl narrated to us: Yazīd ibn Zuray‘ narrated to us: Habīb al-Mu‘allim narrated to us, from ‘Amr ibn Shu‘ayb, from Sa‘īd ibn al-Musayyib, that two brothers from the Ansār jointly held an inheritance. One asked the other to divide it, and the latter said, “If you ask me again to divide it, all my wealth shall be devoted to the door of the Kaaba.” ‘Umar said to him, “The Kaaba has no need of your wealth. Offer expiation for your oath and speak to your brother. I heard the Messenger of Allah—may Allah bless him and grant him peace—say: ‘You are bound by neither an oath nor a vow involving disobedience to the Lord, severing ties of kinship, or what you do not own.’”

This man used a conditional formulation, consisting of a condition and its consequence. He made the obligation to spend his wealth on the door of the Kaaba conditional upon his brother asking him to divide the inheritance. Such a formulation may be intended as a devotional vow, as when someone says, “If Allah heals the sick person whose illness concerns me and safeguards my property that is elsewhere, then a third of my wealth shall be given in charity.” It may also be intended as an oath-vow, called a “vow of obstinacy and anger,” as intended by the man who made this conditional declaration.

The formulation is conditional in both cases, but the meaning and intention differ. In the first case, the person desires the fulfilment of the condition, which is a blessing from Allah, such as the recovery of the sick or the preservation of wealth. He also intends to undertake an act of obedience to Allah in gratitude for His blessing and to draw closer to Him.

In the other type, his aim is to restrain himself or someone else from an action, or to urge its performance, and he swears an oath. The obligation deters him because he is unwilling to incur it and because he dislikes and hates it, just as he shuns disbelief, hates it, and finds it abhorrent. Thus he says, “If I do it, then he is