the ilāʾ lapses.
If, however, he swears separately to each of the two wives, making the divorce of the other conditional upon his having intercourse with her and vowing that he will not approach her, he thereby undertakes ilāʾ in respect of them both.
If only one wife brings him before the judge, the judge fixes for him a four-month term beginning on the day she instituted the suit. If they both sue him together, the judge sets the ilāʾ term for each of them from the day they jointly filed the case, and he is halted at the end of that period; should he resume relations with one, he breaks his oath regarding the other, whereas if he resumes with neither, both are divorced from him.
In this situation the term runs from the day the matter is presented to the judge, not from the day the oath was sworn. The reason is that in an unrestricted ilāʾ a single act of intercourse breaks the oath and ends the ilāʾ, whereas here, when he says, “You are divorced if I do not do such-and-such,” his oath is not nullified by intercourse alone unless he also performs the act to which he swore.
Anyone who swears by divorce that he will refrain from some mentioned act is not considered under ilāʾ, because that oath does not prevent him from intercourse with his wife; this differs from the man who swears by divorce that he will certainly do something and then fails to do it, as I have already explained.
If a man swears, pledging the emancipation of his slave should he have intercourse with his wife, and the slave dies, the ilāʾ lapses; the same applies if he sells the slave. Should he buy him back later or receive him as a gift and accept him, the ilāʾ returns; but if he inherits him, the ilāʾ does not revive.
If a man vows to free a slave—whether unspecified or a particular slave—then divorces his wife, purchases another slave, and emancipates him, the ilāʾ is not lifted according to Mālik. Ibn al-Qāsim maintains that it is lifted, by analogy with the permissibility of offering expiation for an oath sworn by Allah before actually breaking it. Others have said that, in an oath sworn by Allah, the ilāʾ is not removed by expiation unless the oath concerned something specifically named, such as freeing a particular slave or divorcing another named wife; in that case it does lapse.
When a man undertakes ilāʾ against his wife, divorces her once or twice, and then takes her back, the ilāʾ is reinstated. But if he divorces her three times and, after she lawfully remarries and becomes lawful to him again, takes her back, the ilāʾ does not return.