206 Claudia Preckel
Shia who deny the legitimacy of the triple ṭalāq. Until the present day,
the All India Muslim Personal Law Board does not accept this stance,
and declares the triple ṭalāq to be “the Sunni” ruling. The question of
divorce, sustenance after divorce and temporal marriages remain rel-
evant questions discussed in a secular, multi-religious India.^141 Protect-
ing women’s status was not the only reasons for the rejection of the
triple ṭalāq. Another surely was to break with the Ḥanafī traditions
to prove one’s own authenticity and familiarity with the Sunna of the
Prophet. On the other hand, the Ahl-i Ḥadīth wanted to win the sup-
port of women and mothers, whom they regarded as responsible for
the education of coming generations. The growing number of books
on marriage, family and education and especially the support of the
ruling Bēgum of Bhopal reinforced the position of the Ahl-i Ḥadīth.
The Ahl-i Ḥadīth scholars in 19th-century Bhopal successfully enforced
their rejection of the triple ṭalāq. They even influenced some Wahhabi
scholars who travelled to India to study Hadith. In the beginning, the
Wahhabis used to base their fatwas on divorce on the Ḥanbalī school
of law in general, which mostly supports the “three counts as three”
ruling.^142 However, after some Wahhabi scholars returned from their
journeys to India, they started issuing fatwas in favour of the “three
counts as one ruling”. For example, ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. Ḥamad Ibn ʿAtīq
issued a fatwa in which he explicitly supported Ibn Taymiyya’s rulings
against a solution “three counts as one”, i. e. he declared such a divorce
invalid. Up to the early 20th century, this ruling against rapid divorce
did not win wider support in Saudi Arabia. It was only ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz
b. Ḥamad’s most famous pupil, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia ʿAbd
al-ʿAzīz Ibn Bāz (d. 1999),^143 who further popularised the rejection of
the triple ṭalāq in Saudi Arabia.
141 For some controversies on Muslim Personal Law see Hartung, Viele Wege und
ein Ziel, pp. 170–181.
142 On the Ḥanbalī school of law see Laoust, Henri: Essai sur les doctrines sociales
et politiques de Takī-d-dīn Aḥmad Ibn Taimīya, canoniste Ḥanbalite: Né à
Ḥarrān en 661/1262, mort à Damas en 728/1328; thèse pour le doctorat, Cai-
ro 1939, pp. 430–432; Al-Matroudi, Abdul Hakim I.: The Ḥanbalī School of
Law and Ibn Taymiyyah. Conflict or Conciliation, London 2006, pp. 171–185;
on the Wahhabiyya see Vogel, Frank: Islamic Law and Legal System. Studies
of Saudi Arabia, Ann Arbor 1997, pp. 5–11; Steinberg, Religion und Staat,
pp. 310–312.
143 On Ibn Bāz, see ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz Asad (ed.): Mawsūʿat imām al-muslimīn fī al-
qarn al-ʿishrīn samāḥat al-shaykh al-ʿAllāma ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz b. ʿAbd Allāh Ibn
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