or divorce; and if she contracts another marriage on that basis, that marriage is annulled, whether she knew her first husband’s whereabouts or not, for the default presumption is that he is still alive. The sole exception is where, during his absence, she had been granted a conditional stipulation backed by an oath of divorce; in that event she may invoke the stipulation if she wishes.

If no information about him can be obtained and his circumstances remain completely obscure, he is treated as a missing person, and the rulings laid down at the beginning of the chapter concerning the missing are applied to him.

Should news of a man’s death reach his wife, whereupon she observes her ʿidda (waiting period) and then marries once it has ended, but the first husband later returns, he has the stronger claim to her than the second husband, whether or not the latter had been alone with her—even if she has borne him children—because she remarried without certainty and without the ijtihād (independent legal judgment) of an imam. The first husband, however, may not resume conjugal relations with her until she has completed the ʿidda required after her separation from the second husband, who is thereby parted from her.

Allah is the One who grants success in attaining what is correct.