Kitab an-Nikah and Kitab at-Talaq

The marriage and divorce sections of Sunan Abu Dawud form one of the most comprehensive collections of family law hadiths in the classical literature. Given that family law touches virtually every Muslim's life at some point and that the differences between the madhabs in this area are significant, Abu Dawud's detailed coverage made his Sunan an indispensable reference in this domain.

Kitab an-Nikah opens with hadiths establishing marriage as a sunnah strongly encouraged by the Prophet. He said: 'O young men, whoever among you is able should marry, for it is more lowering of the gaze and more guarding of chastity. Whoever cannot should fast, for it is a protection for him.' This hadith, along with others on the virtues of marriage and the Prophet's disapproval of permanent celibacy, establishes the normative position before the legal details that follow.

The conditions of a valid marriage are addressed systematically. The requirement of a guardian (wali) for the bride, the presence of witnesses, the mahr (bridal gift), and the offer and acceptance — Abu Dawud collects the hadiths bearing on each condition with sufficient variant narrations for jurists to construct and debate their respective positions. The famous hadith 'There is no marriage without a guardian' became the basis for the Hanbali, Shafi'i, and Maliki positions requiring the wali, while the Hanafi position — that a woman of full capacity may contract her own marriage — draws on different evidence.

The prohibition of certain marriages is covered carefully. The hadiths on the women a man may not marry (mahram categories), the prohibition of marrying two sisters simultaneously, the conditions under which a previously divorced woman may remarry her first husband, and the prohibition of a man proposing marriage to a woman who has already received another's proposal — all of these are addressed with the textual precision characteristic of the Sunan.

Kitab at-Talaq is one of the most carefully organized sections of the collection. Abu Dawud opens it with the hadith that divorce is the most disliked of permitted things to Allah — establishing that while divorce is lawful, it should be approached as a last resort. He then works through the types of divorce: the standard revocable divorce (which gives the husband the right to reconcile within the waiting period), the triple divorce (whose pronunciation all at once was condemned by the Prophet according to certain narrations, though practiced widely), and the irrevocable forms.

The famous hadith on Ibn Umar's divorce — narrated in detail in Sahih Muslim but also in Abu Dawud — describes how Ibn Umar divorced his wife while she was menstruating, and the Prophet ordered him to take her back and wait until she was pure, then could divorce if he wished. This narration established the sunnah method of divorce (during a period of purity in which the husband has not had intercourse) and the prohibition of divorce during menstruation.

The chapters on khul (wife-initiated divorce through returning the mahr), ila (oath of abstention), zihar (an ancient form of prohibited divorce expression), and li'an (mutual oath of accusation in cases of alleged adultery) give the section comprehensive coverage of every form of marital dissolution recognized in Islamic law. Abu Dawud's assembly of hadiths on each type made the Sunan the primary hadith reference for family law jurists across all schools.