The Pre-Islamic Formula and Its Quranic Abolition
Zihar (al-zihar) derives from zahr, the Arabic word for ‘back’, and names a custom of the Jahiliyya in which a husband, intending to estrange himself from his wife, would pronounce the formula ‘You are to me like the back of my mother’ (anti alayya ka-zahri ummi). In pre-Islamic usage this declaration functioned as a severe and often irrevocable repudiation: it likened the wife to one of the men’s permanently forbidden kin (mahram), rendering her unlawful for intimacy, yet it did not dissolve the marriage in a way that freed her to remarry. The wife was thereby trapped, neither truly wedded nor released, an injustice the Quran would single out for reform. The roots z-h-r and the imagery of the ‘back’ were chosen because the maternal back evokes the absolute prohibition of marriage to one’s mother, so the husband was in effect claiming his wife had become as forbidden to him as his own mother.
Islam confronted this practice in Sura al-Mujadila (58:1-4). The opening verse declares, ‘God has heard the words of her who disputes with you concerning her husband and complains to God’ (qad sami’a Allahu qawla allati tujadiluka fi zawjiha wa-tashtaki ila Allah). The Quran then pronounces its verdict: those who repudiate their wives by zihar are speaking falsely, ‘for they are not their mothers; their mothers are only those who gave them birth; and indeed they utter an odious saying and a falsehood’ (in ummahatuhum illa allai waladnahum wa-innahum la-yaquluna munkaran min al-qawl wa-zuran, 58:2). The formula is thus stripped of its legal power as a mode of divorce while being condemned as a sinful and untrue speech-act.
Khawla bint Tha’laba and the Occasion of Revelation
The asbab al-nuzul (occasions of revelation) place a specific woman at the center of these verses: Khawla bint Tha’laba (also transmitted as Khawla bint Malik ibn Tha’laba al-Khazrajiyya), wife of Aws ibn al-Samit, brother of the Companion ‘Ubada ibn al-Samit. According to the well-attested reports, Aws in a moment of anger pronounced zihar against Khawla. Distressed at being neither free nor a wife, and unwilling to abandon her aging husband and their household, she came to the Prophet to argue her case. Since no revelation had yet addressed the matter, the Prophet initially could only tell her that she appeared to have become forbidden to her husband; Khawla persisted, disputing and pleading, and turned to complain directly to God. It is from her insistent pleading (jidal, mujadala) that the sura takes its name, al-Mujadila, ‘The Woman Who Disputes’ (or ‘The Pleading Woman’).
‘A’isha later remarked on the breadth of God’s hearing, observing that Khawla’s quiet complaint in a corner of the house was heard from above the seven heavens. The episode is cherished in the tradition as a demonstration that the grievance of a single woman could occasion direct divine legislation, and that the Sharia would not leave her suspended in the cruelty of the Jahili custom. The verses that followed both vindicated Khawla and prescribed the remedy by which her marriage to Aws could be restored.
The Graded Expiation (Kaffara) and Juristic Detail
Having condemned zihar, the Quran does not simply void it but treats it as a serious transgression requiring expiation before the spouses may resume relations: ‘Those who repudiate their wives by zihar and then would go back on what they said must free a slave before they touch one another… And he who cannot find the means should fast for two consecutive months before they touch one another; and he who is unable to do so should feed sixty needy persons’ (58:3-4). This graded kaffara, freeing a slave, then fasting two consecutive months, then feeding sixty poor, mirrors the structure of other Quranic expiations and is understood by the jurists as a tartib (ordered sequence), each option resorted to only when the prior is genuinely impossible.
The Sunni schools (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, Hanbali) and the Ja’fari school agree that zihar makes intimacy unlawful until the kaffara is discharged, but they differ on its triggers and details. They debate which precise wordings constitute zihar and whether likening the wife to other forbidden female relatives counts; whether zihar can be made conditional or time-limited; and how the ‘two consecutive months’ are reckoned if broken by illness or menstruation-related interruption. The schools also discuss the wife’s recourse if the husband neither performs the kaffara nor releases her, with several holding that a judge may compel him to choose between expiation and divorce so she is not left in limbo. In the modern era, with the abolition of slavery, the first option lapses in practice and attention turns to the fast and the feeding. Throughout, zihar remains a paradigmatic case study linking the law of marriage and divorce to the broader fiqh of oaths and expiations.
See also: Fiqh Al Talaq, Fiqh Al Lian, Fiqh Al Ila, Fiqh Al Kaffarah, Fiqh Al Yamin