‘For you are the divorce, and you are the divorce... and you are the divorce, three times, completely.’

He thus made the repeated divorce three, and if it were for inclusiveness, that would have been nine.

Section: If he says, ‘The divorce is incumbent upon me,’ or, ‘The divorce is binding upon me,’ it is explicit; for it is said of someone whose divorce has taken place: ‘The divorce has become binding upon him.’ They said: ‘If a youth understands divorce and pronounces it, it becomes binding upon him.’ Perhaps they meant: ‘Its ruling becomes binding upon him.’ Thus, they omitted the possessor and put the possessed in its place, and then this became widespread until it became one of the conventional names, and the literal meaning was submerged within it. What he intended of one, two, or three occurs through it. If he uses it absolutely, there are two narrations regarding it, the rationale for which is what has preceded. If he says, ‘The divorce is upon me,’ it is equivalent to his saying, ‘The divorce is incumbent upon me,’ because whoever is bound by something, it is upon him like a debt, and the use of this in enacting divorce has become well-known. There are two narrations derived from it in the case of its absolute usage: is it three or one? The most plausible view in all of this is that it is one, because people of common usage do not believe it to be three, nor do they know that the alif and lam (the definite article) are for inclusiveness. For this reason, one of them denies that he has divorced three times and does not believe he has divorced anything except one. Therefore, the implication of the expression in their opinion is one, and they do not intend anything other than what they believe is the implication of their expression, so it becomes as if they intended the one.

Section: If he says, ‘You are divorced according to the Sunnah,’ she is divorced once at the time of the Sunnah. Abu Hanifa held that she is divorced three times over three purity periods, based on his view that this is the Sunnah. We have already explained that the divorce of the Sunnah is a single divorce during a period of purity in which he has not had intercourse with her. If he says, ‘You are divorced the divorce of the Sunnah,’ a single divorce occurs in a period of purity in which he has not had intercourse with her as well, unless he intends three, in which case it is three, because he mentioned the verbal noun, and the verbal noun applies to the many and the few, unlike the case before it.