Islamic Fiqh > Oaths and vows > Vows (nudhur)
The vow (nudhur): definition, status (only of obedience), the vow of disobedience is not fulfilled, and types of vows.
Updated on 06 October 2026 at 10:50 PM
The jurists of the 4 schools set out the rules of the vow (nadhr) in detail: they addressed the conditions of the one making the vow and the formula by which the vow is expressed, then the categories of the vow, from the absolute and unspecified vow to the vow concerning a permissible, disliked or individually obligatory act, together with the vow of obstinacy and anger and the vow of obedience, before turning to practical questions such as eating the meat of an animal offered in fulfilment of a vow and fasting the days of the 2 Eids.
The chapter is published in sections, each complete and directly accessible:
Bidayat al-Mujtahid by Ibn Rushd · comparative
It also contains, from Ibn Abbas, that he said: "If a man forbids (by oath) his wife to himself, it is an oath that he expiates". And he said: "Indeed, you have in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful example" (al-Ahzab, 21).
Third chapter: the knowledge of the thing that follows from the vow and its rulings. First question: what is obligatory in the unspecified vow. Third chapter: the knowledge of the thing that follows from it and its rulings. As for their disagreement over what is obligatory in a vow made upon a vow, and its rulings, there is much divergence in it; but we shall signal the best-known questions, those which concern most of that by explicit expression.