Syed Ameer Ali says:—
“The validity of marriages contracted for minors by any guardian other than the father or the grandfather, is not established until ratified by the parties on arriving at puberty. Such ratification in the case of males must be express, and in the case of females may be either express or implied. On arriving at puberty, both the parties have the right of either ratifying the contract entered into during their minority or of cancelling it. According to the Sunnis, in order to effect a dissolution of the matrimonial tie, in exercise of the right of option reserved to the parties, it is necessary that there should be a decree of the judge; and until such decree is made, the marriage remains intact. If before a decree has been obtained one of the parties should die, the survivor would be entitled to inherit from the deceased.
“The Shiahs differ materially from the Sunnis on this. They hold that a marriage contracted on behalf of minors by any unauthorised person (fazûlî), i.e. any person other than a father or a grandfather, remains in absolute suspension or abeyance until assented to by the parties on arriving at puberty; that, in fact, no legal effect arises from it until such ratification, and if in the interval previous to ratification, one of the parties should die, the contract would fall to the ground and there would be no right of inheritance in the survivor.” (Personal Law of the Mahommedans, p. 269.)
PULPIT. The pulpit or mimbar (منبر) used for the recital of the k͟hut̤bah on Fridays in the chief mosque is usually a wooden structure of three steps and movable, but in the large mosques of Turkey and Egypt it is a fixture of brick or stone.
It is related that the Prophet, when addressing the people, stood on the uttermost step, Abū Bakr on the second, and ʿUmar on the third or lowest. ʿUs̤mān being the most humble of men, would gladly have descended lower, but this being impossible, he fixed upon the second step, from which it is now usual to recite the k͟hut̤bah on Fridays and on the two great festivals. [[MOSQUE], [MIMBAR].]
A MIMBAR.
(W. S. Chadwick.)
PUNISHMENT is divided into three classes: (1) Ḥadd (حد), (2) Qiṣāṣ (قصاص), (3) Taʿẕīb (تعذيب).
(1) Ḥadd (حد), pl. Ḥudūd (lit. “That which is defined”), is that punishment the limits of which have been defined in the Qurʾān and Ḥadīs̤. The following belong to this class:—