Islamic Fiqh > Marriage and family > Mahr (dowry): status, mention and limits > Marrying in exchange for the teaching of the Quran
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Updated on 25 September 2026 at 3:23 PM
This part belongs to the full section: All sections of this part.
The mahr is the wife's right established by the marriage contract. Islamic law has settled its nature, its amount, the modalities of its payment and the causes of its invalidity, yet the jurists of the schools have differed on several points: may one marry in exchange for the teaching of the Quran or for a service? What becomes of a mahr that is increased, reduced, waived, kept secret or deferred after the contract? The sheets below lay out these differences school by school, drawing on the Quran, the Sunnah and the classical works.
The jurists differed over the validity of a marriage whose mahr would be the teaching of the Quran, when a man marries a woman on condition of teaching her the Quran or a determined portion of it. Two opinions emerge.
First opinion: the mahr cannot be the teaching of a portion of the Quran. This is the madhhab of the Hanafis, of the Malikis according to one view, and of the Hanbalis. They require the mahr to be property, on the basis of Allah's saying:
"And lawful to you are all women beyond those described, provided that you seek them with your wealth"
Surah An-Nisa, 24
The verse makes wealth a condition of the mahr; whatever is not property therefore cannot be a mahr. Likewise His saying:
"half of what you specified"
Surah Al-Baqara, 237
orders that the specified mahr be halved upon divorce before consummation, which presupposes that the specified mahr can be divided, and that is only possible with property.
As for the hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd (may Allah be pleased with him):
A woman came to the Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) and declared that she was giving herself to Allah and His Messenger. He said: "I have no need of women." A man said: "Marry her to me." He said: "Give her a garment." The man replied: "I cannot find one." He said: "Give her at least an iron ring." The man proved unable, so the Prophet asked: "What do you possess of the Quran?" He said: "Such and such surahs." He said: "I have married her to you with what you possess of the Quran."Reported by Bukhari (4741)
the proponents of the first opinion reply that it cannot establish the validity of the mahr, for eight reasons:
"and a believing woman who gives herself to the Prophet, if the Prophet wishes to marry her: a privilege for you, excluding the other believers"
Surah Al-Ahzab, 50
The proof is that she said to the Messenger of Allah: "I have given myself to you," and the report mentions neither his consulting her nor her saying "marry me with her". It is objected that the hadith could imply an unreported request from her; the answer is that he might equally have set a different mahr that went unreported, and neither interpretation is weightier than the other.
On this basis the dower of the like (mahr al-mithl) becomes due: a woman is only handed over in exchange for property, and since returning the designated counter-gift is impossible, its value becomes due. The dower of the like is the original compensation in this chapter because it is the value of intimacy; one turns to the specified mahr only when the specification is valid and constitutes an estimate of that value. The marriage remains valid, for its validity does not depend on the specification at all, since it is valid without any specification (references: "Ahkam al-Quran" by al-Jassas (3/91-92), "Bada'i as-Sana'i" (2/277-279), "Sharh Sahih al-Bukhari" by Ibn Battal (7/267-269), "al-Mughni" (7/163-164), "al-Insaf" (8/234), among others).
Second opinion: it is permitted to make the teaching of the Quran, or of a known portion of it, the mahr. This is the madhhab of the Shafi'is, of the Malikis according to one view, and of the Hanbalis according to a narration, based on the hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd, whose meaning is: on condition of teaching what you possess of the Quran, the Quran itself not being lawful as a mahr. The version of Ata ibn Abi Rabah from Abu Hurayra (may Allah be pleased with him) mentions the teaching explicitly, without the garment or the ring:
The Prophet (peace and blessings be upon him) asked him: "What do you memorize of the Quran?" He said: "Surah al-Baqara, or the one after it." He said: "Rise and teach her twenty verses; she is your wife."Weak hadith, reported by Abu Dawud (2112) and an-Nasa'i in "as-Sunan al-Kubra" (5480)
Teaching is indeed a defined and lawful benefit; it may therefore be made a mahr, like teaching a permissible poem, for any benefit that may be claimed by a contract of hire may be claimed by a contract of marriage, like the benefit of slaves or of land. To those who interpret the hadith as "because of your merit in the Quran", the answer comes in two ways: first, the Prophet had initially asked for a garment and then an iron ring as mahr, and, not finding one, he made the Quran a substitute for it, which implies that it serves as a mahr; second, this interpretation is refuted by Abu Hurayra's hadith "Rise and teach her twenty verses". Nor is this privilege specific to the Messenger of Allah, for he was not the groom but the one who concluded the marriage.
Moreover, whatever is specific to the Messenger of Allah requires a proof indicating its exclusivity, otherwise he would have a partner among his nation. By analogy, every lawful benefit that one person may grant another gratuitously may be granted as a mahr. The comparison with prayer and fasting is broken: copying mushafs and building mosques, though acts of worship, may serve as a mahr, whereas prayer and fasting admit no delegation and their benefit accrues only to the one who performs them, unlike teaching the Quran. As for the objection "it is a communal obligation, so no wage may be taken", the answer is that a wage is permitted for communal obligations such as washing the dead, carrying biers and digging graves. The designated benefit must finally be known, for the unknown mahr is invalid (references: "al-Hawi al-Kabir" (9/404-407), "al-Bayan" (9/374), "Tafsir al-Qurtubi" (13/273), "al-Mughni" (7/163-164), "al-Insaf" (8/234)).
The origin of the disagreement is whether a wage may be taken for teaching the Quran: whoever forbids it refuses to make it a mahr, whoever permits it accepts it. Ibn Nujaym the Hanafi thus wrote that the fatwa of his day was the lawfulness of hiring for the teaching of the Quran and fiqh, hence the validity of such a mahr ("al-Bahr ar-Ra'iq" (3/168), "Fath al-Qadir").
The Hanafis require the mahr to be a legal property (mal mutaqawwim), based on An-Nisa 24 and Al-Baqara 237. From this follow several cases:
Among the Malikis the question has three answers: (1) it is valid but disliked, based on the hadith of Sahl ibn Sa'd; (2) the marriage concluded for a benefit (a house, a slave, a mount, service in farming or building, the journey of the pilgrimage, teaching a surah, taking her on pilgrimage) passes definitively without annulment, the most widespread view; (3) it is invalid, the marriage is annulled before consummation and established after it with the dower of the like, with restitution of the value of the wage at the time of annulment, even after consummation. As for the ju'l (conditional reward), its prohibition is unanimous: "I marry you and I make my mahr the bringing back of your runaway slave" is a marriage with an option, annulled before consummation but not after.
The Shafi'is validate the free person's benefit as a mahr: sewing, building, teaching the Quran and the like for which hiring is valid, based on Allah's word reporting Shu'ayb:
"I wish to marry you to one of these two daughters of mine, on condition that you work for me eight years"
Surah Al-Qasas, 27
Pasturing his flock is presented there as a mahr in a former law, without disapproval, as is the hadith of the marriage against the Quran. Teaching covers everything that must be learned: al-Fatiha, the Quran, hadith, fiqh, poetry, calligraphy, or teaching the wife or her child what is obligatory for her. If the husband divorces her before the teaching, it becomes impossible since she has become a non-mahram to him and suspicion is strong; the reply is that looking at a non-mahram for the purpose of teaching her is lawful only for obligatory teaching such as al-Fatiha, as as-Subki preferred, or only for one who feels no desire (amrad), as Jalal ad-Din al-Mahalli preferred, the relied-upon view being the first. Marrying a woman of the Book in exchange for teaching her the Quran is valid if her conversion is hoped for; teaching the Torah or the Gospel between two unbelievers followed by conversion or litigation brought before the Muslims after the teaching leaves her with no other right, and if it precedes the teaching, the dower of the like is due to her.
The Hanbalis in the madhhab invalidate marriage in exchange for teaching a specified portion of the Quran, since intimacy is opened only through wealth (An-Nisa 24, and An-Nisa 25 where "affluence" means wealth), and based on the munkar report cited above, reported by an-Najjad. The hadith of the self-gift means: "I married you to her because you are of the people of the Quran, as he married Abu Talha for his Islam"; teaching is not mentioned in it, and it may be specific to that man. In every case where the specification is invalid or the contract silent about the mahr, the dower of the like is due. Conversely, marrying in exchange for teaching chapters of fiqh or hadith, lawful poetry, an art, a craft or writing, if specified, is valid: even if he does not know the subject, he learns it and then teaches it; if she learns it from another, he owes her the wage; if the teaching becomes impossible, he owes her the wage; if he taught her and she forgot the craft, nothing weighs upon him; if he makes her repeat endlessly and she forgets each time, it does not count as teaching by custom; in a dispute her word prevails, the origin being non-performance; if she demands that another teach her, he is not bound; if he divorces her before consummation and before the teaching, he owes her half the wage of the equivalent teaching, since she has become a non-mahram and the fitna is not averted; after consummation, the full wage; if he divorces her before consummation but after the teaching, he owes half the wage, since divorce before consummation obliges only half the mahr and restitution by half of the teaching being impossible ("al-Mughni" (7/163-164), "al-Insaf" (8/234), "Kashshaf al-Qina" (5/145), "Manar as-Sabil" (3/7)).
The majority of jurists permit increasing the mahr or diminishing it after the obligation (that is, after the right has become fixed), based on Allah's saying:
"No sin shall be upon you in what you mutually agree to after the obligation"
Surah An-Nisa, 24
The verse covers every subsequent agreement: reducing part of the mahr, deferring it, gifting all of it, releasing it or increasing it, and its generality covers the increase as well as the decrease. The scholars detailed the rules school by school:
Abu Ja'far at-Tahawi reports the Hanafi position, then: Zufar and ash-Shafi'i liken the increase to a gift with a future term, valid if she takes possession of it, lapsed otherwise. Malik says: the increase is valid; if he divorces her before consummation he recovers half of the increase; if he dies before she receives it, she has nothing of it, for it is an unreceived gift.
The Malikis: once the mahr is fixed and known, the spouses' subsequent agreement to waive it in whole or in part, or to increase it, is without objection (An-Nisa 24); if one of them does not manage his own affairs, it belongs to the guardian (Al-Baqara 237). The husband who increases his wife's mahr: the increase follows the ruling of a gift; if he dies before she receives it, the increase alone lapses, by his death or insolvency before consummation; the death of the wife does not void the gift, acceptance having taken place. If the increase is stipulated as part of the mahr and he divorces her before consummation, it is likewise halved, whether or not it is of the same kind as the mahr. Abu al-Qasim al-Jallab reports from Ibn al-Qasim that half of the increase falls upon divorce before consummation and that death before consummation removes it entirely; al-Jallab himself holds the increase due ("at-Tafri'" (1/400), "Ahkam al-Quran" by Ibn al-Arabi (1/500), "Sharh Mukhtasar Khalil" (3/181-183), "Tahrir al-Mukhtasar" (3/55)).
The Hanbalis: the increase after the contract attaches to it, Ahmad stating it explicitly: the man who increases his wife's mahr after seeing her acts validly; if he divorces her before consummation, she receives half of the original mahr and of the increase (An-Nisa 24), the period after the contract being a time for fixing the mahr. If she releases him from the mahr or gifts it to him and he then divorces her before consummation, or they conclude a khul', he recovers half of it, like one who releases a debtor and then becomes his creditor through another channel. Also detailed: release of half followed by divorce (he recovers within the remaining half), payment of the mahr by a third party as charity, the various forms of khul' (including the wife's request "grant me khul' for whatever of my mahr has been delivered to me" or "on condition of no claim against you in the mahr", which amounts to khul' for half and frees the husband of the whole), the waiver by the woman given discretion over the mahr (mufawwada) or assigned a corrupt mahr (wine, an unknown thing), valid before or after consummation since the cause (the contract) has occurred; if he divorces her after the waiver before consummation, he recovers half the dower of the like, or she receives the mut'a according to another view. Finally, the husband is freed of the mahr, whether specified or described in his liability, only by delivering it to the wife or to her agent if she is adult and of sound judgment, even if a virgin; delivery to the father or another guardian does not free him, and he recovers from the guardian what he handed over if the wife denies receipt ("al-Mughni" (7/204-205), "Kashshaf al-Qina" (5/162-173), "Matalib Uli an-Nuha" (5/212), "Manar as-Sabil" (3/16-17)).
The scholars agree on the validity of waiving the mahr; they differed over the identity of the one intended by Allah's saying:
"except where they waive, or he waives in whose hand is the knot of marriage. To waive is nearer to piety. Do not forget liberality between yourselves. Allah sees well what you do"
Surah Al-Baqara, 237
It is unanimous that "except where they waive", in the feminine, designates the wives: their waiver consists in abandoning the remaining half of the mahr after divorce. The disagreement concerns whether this includes the virgin: the Hanafis, the Shafi'is in the madhhab and the Hanbalis extend it to the virgin as to the previously married woman (thayyib), the verse not distinguishing between them, and the Muslims agree that virgin and thayyib are equal in half the mahr upon divorce before consummation. This presupposes an adult woman of sound judgment: the minor or the woman under interdiction can neither waive nor give, according to the majority view reported by Ibn Rushd, apart from a dissenting minority relying on the verse's generality. The Malikis restrict "except where they waive" to women already consummated; for the virgin the waiver belongs to her guardian, not to her.
Over "he in whose hand is the knot of marriage" two readings clash: the husband, who completes the whole mahr after a divorce before consummation ("I choose her separation and withhold none of her mahr"), or the guardian, who waives half the mahr of his virgin daughter. The majority (Hanafis, later Shafi'i school, Hanbalis) hold it is the husband: Allah encouraged him to waive as He encouraged her, and the apparent sense of the verse indicates that the one managing the contract is the husband, not the guardian, who therefore cannot waive anything of the mahr, before or after consummation. Five arguments establish this reading: the knot designates a concluded matter, and after the contract the marriage is in the husband's hands; waiver presupposes ownership, which belongs to the husband; the essence of waiver is abandonment, proper to the husband, while the guardian's would be only a gift or release in a figurative sense; addressing the verse to the husband generalizes it to every divorcing husband, whereas the guardian would restrict it to the father or grandfather with a minor virgin; finally "to waive is nearer to piety" does not fit the guardian, whose piety lies in protecting the wealth of the one in his care, not in freeing himself of it. The Sunnah confirms it:
The holder of the knot of marriage is the husband.Weak hadith, reported by ad-Daruqutni (3762); and Sharik reported it from Ali ibn Abi Talib (may Allah be pleased with him)
Jubayr ibn Mut'im married a woman of Banu an-Najjar, fixed her mahr, then divorced her before consummating; he recited this verse and said: "I am more entitled than she to waive," then handed her the whole mahr.Reported by ad-Daruqutni (3758, 3760) and al-Bayhaqi in "as-Sunan al-Kubra" (14226)
By analogy too: the two spouses are equally rewarded in what they are commanded and encouraged to do; if the wife is encouraged to waive in order to draw the men, the husband is likewise encouraged to draw the women. Al-Jassas adds that the verse is mutashabih (open to two meanings) and must be referred back to the muhkam, that is, to the explicit verses (An-Nisa 4; An-Nisa 20: "if you wish to exchange a wife for another and you have given one of them a qintar, take nothing back from her"; Al-Baqara 229: "it is not lawful for you to take back anything of what you have given them"), Allah having ordered the ambiguous to be referred to the explicit and having blamed those who follow the ambiguous seeking discord:
"As for those in whose hearts is deviation, they follow the ambiguous part of it, seeking discord"
Surah Aal Imran, 7
The verse moreover cannot refer to the guardian, literally or figuratively, for "he in whose hand is the knot of marriage" presupposes an existing knot: no knot is in the guardian's hand before or after the contract, whereas it was in the husband's hand before the divorce.
The Malikis, ash-Shafi'i in his earlier position and the Hanbalis according to one view, hold that the verse designates the father for his virgin daughter: since the adult woman is encouraged to waive, the guardian of the minor is encouraged likewise, so that husbands are urged in both cases; the father may waive half the mahr of his virgin daughter divorced before consummation. According to Malik this is not possible before the divorce; Ibn al-Qasim allows it if there is a benefit, such as the husband's hardship; after consummation no guardian may waive, the word belonging to the woman who has become a thayyib. Five arguments of the verse support the guardian reading: the verse begins by addressing the husbands, passes to the wives by metonymy, then addresses a third party who is not being directly addressed; after divorce only the guardian can contract a new marriage; the guardian's special prerogative is holding the contract, the husband's the enjoyment; the husband remains debtor of the remaining half to the adult woman or the guardian of the minor, so the waiver belongs to the one entitled to the debt; finally Allah encouraged both sides to waive and addressed the minors through their fathers. Ibn Rushd reports the famous question: may the father waive half the mahr of his virgin daughter divorced before consummation, and the master for his slave girl? Malik permits it, Abu Hanifa and ash-Shafi'i forbid it. The disagreement stems from the ambiguity of the verb "waive" (to cancel or to give) and of the pronoun (husband or guardian). A minority allows every guardian to waive half the mahr due to the woman. The majority of scholars maintain that the minor and the interdicted woman cannot give away half of their mahr (references: "al-Muwatta" (2/527), "al-Istidhkar" (5/430-432), "Ahkam al-Quran" (1/293-294), "Tafsir al-Qurtubi" (3/206-207), "adh-Dhakhira" (4/371), "al-Furuq" (3/252-253), "al-Mughni" (7/195), "al-Hawi al-Kabir" (9/513-516), among others).
The jurists differed over a marriage stipulating a mahr for the wife and a sum for her father: is the contract valid and the father entitled to his share, or is it invalid with the dower of the like, or valid with everything for the wife?
Whatever woman is given a mahr, a gift or a trousseau before the protection of the marriage, it belongs to her; whatever comes after the protection of the marriage belongs to the one to whom it was given; and what a man has most right to is that by which his daughter or his sister is honored.Weak hadith, reported by Abu Dawud (2129), an-Nasa'i (3353) and Ahmad (6709)