—whether Muslim or of the People of the Book, whether the marriage had been consummated or not—whose husband dies while she is not pregnant is four months and ten days. The ʿidda of a slave-woman whose husband dies is two months and five nights; if they are pregnant, their ʿidda ends with delivery or miscarriage.

The woman who secures khulʿ, the one separated through liʿān, the apostate woman, the wife of an apostate, and every woman whose marriage terminates through divorce or annulment all observe the same ʿidda as an ordinary divorcee.

If a woman is in her ʿidda after a revocable divorce and her husband—who still retained the right to take her back—dies, she must begin the widow’s ʿidda of four months and ten days. When both spouses are free she inherits from him; if she is a slave-woman she waits two months and five nights and receives no share of the estate.

Should a slave-woman who has been given a revocable divorce be emancipated while her husband remains a slave, and she does not exercise her option of separation until he dies while she is still in her ʿidda, she must observe the waiting period of a free widow—four months and ten days—for the woman in a revocable divorce is still deemed a wife and therefore begins the ʿidda of widowhood.

Conversely, when a slave-woman is divorced or widowed and only afterwards set free, her ʿidda does not switch to that of a free woman, because the obligation was fixed the day her husband divorced or died while she was still a slave.

The ʿidda is reckoned from the very day of death or divorce; the opinion that it begins when the news reaches her carries no weight in Mālik’s school.

If a man pronounces a revocable divorce, then takes his wife back during her ʿidda, and later divorces her again after that reconciliation, she must begin a fresh ʿidda from the second divorce. Mālik makes no distinction here between whether or not he had intercourse with her after taking her back.

If he issues a second divorce during the first ʿidda before taking her back, that pronouncement counts, yet her ʿidda continues from the first divorce and is not restarted.

When the first divorce was irrevocable and he remarries her—whether within her ʿidda or after it has ended—then divorces her before any intercourse occurs, she owes no ʿidda for the second divorce; she simply completes whatever remains of the first. If intercourse does take place after the new marriage, she must commence a new waiting period.