HKB
is ordained: but it shall be no crime in you to make any other agreement among yourselves,b after the ordinance shall be complied with; for GOD is knowing and wise.
q It was customary among the pagan Arabs, when a man died, for one of his relations to claim a right to his widow, which he asserted by throwing his garment over her; and then he either married her himself, if he thought fit, on assigning her the same dower that her former husband had done, or kept her dower and married her to another, or else refused to let her marry unless she redeemed herself by quitting what she might claim of her husband's goods.1 This unjust custom is abolished by this passage. r Some say these words are directed to husbands who used to imprison their wives without any just cause, and out of covetousness, merely to make them relinquish their dower or their inheritance.2 s Such as disobedience, ill behaviour, immodesty, and the like.3 t That is, by divorcing one, and marrying another. u i.e., Ever so large a dower. x See chapter 2, p. 25. y The same was also prohibited by the Levitical law.4 z According to this passage it is not lawful to marry a free woman that is already married, be she a Mohammedan or not, unless she be legally parted from her husband by divorce; but it is lawful to marry those who are slaves, or taken in war, after they shall have gone through the proper purifications, though their husbands be living. Yet, according to the decision of Abu Hanîfah, it is not lawful to marry such whose husbands shall be taken, or in actual slavery with them.1 a That is, assign them their dower. b That is, either to increase the dower, or to abate some part or even the whole of it.
1 Al Beidâwi. 2 Idem. 3 Idem. 4 Levit. xviii. 18. 1 Al Beidâwi.