Al-mas’ala al-surayjiyya

Batinites required the new initiate to make a kind of statement-contract, an oath, by which the neophyte pledged himself to repudiate his favourite wife or to free a slave where he had left the sect and had revealed its secrets. Shafi‘ite jurists had to unravel the question whether and how to release those Muslims who left the Qarmati sect from their vow. Some of them suggested the husband to utter the following formula: “Whenever I had repudiated you, you will be repudiated three times before” (mahma waqa‘a ‘alayki talaqi fa-anti taliq qablahu talathan).
The most current name of this question is al-mas’ala al-surayjiyya, because the Shafi‘ite jurist Ibn Surayj al-Baghdadi is recognized as the authority which supported the validity of the legal fiction that lies beneath it.
The formula, however, was subject of controversies mainly among the Shafi‘ite jurists. In the mas’ala surayjiyya the complex question of the oath is met. The basic issue was: when the husband pronounces that formula, is he a perjurer if he breaks his oath?
First al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111) recognized in the formula the existence of a vicious circle, which avoids the perjury and prevents the occurrence of the repudiation. Later on he accepted the validity of this formula of the repudiation, especially by meeting the scruples of pious Muslims.
The first opinion of al-Ghazali is expressed in his Kitab al-fada’ih al-batiniyya (ed. by Goldziher) and in a specific work, still manuscript, Ghayat al-ghawr fi dirayat al-dawr, composed in 484/1091. His changed opinion is expounded in a short ms., entitled Ghawr al-dawr fil-mas’ala al-surayjiyya by al-Subki.