Scope and Structure
Personal status law covers the entire legal life-course of a person:
Birth and Infancy: Legitimacy (nasab), naming (tasmiya), circumcision timing, and the legal capacities of the infant.
Childhood: The mumayyiz (age of discernment, approximately 7) and the baligh (puberty), at which full legal capacity begins. The rules of guardianship (wilaya) and custody (hadana).
Marriage: The conditions of a valid marriage; the rights and obligations of spouses; financial obligations (mahr, nafaqa); the categories of prohibited marriages; the procedures for marriage under the different schools.
Dissolution of Marriage: The four major pathways — talaq (husband’s unilateral pronouncement), khul’ (wife-initiated by returning mahr), faskh (judicial annulment), ila’ and zihar (special cases).
Waiting Periods: The ‘idda rules — different periods for divorce, death, and doubtful pregnancy.
Lineage and Legitimacy: When lineage is established; the rules for disputed paternity.
Inheritance: The entire system of Quranic shares (fara’id) and residuary shares.
Death: Washing, shrouding, prayer, burial — the Islamic death rites.
Why It Remains Operative
Personal status law has survived wholesale in Muslim-majority legal systems because it is perceived as directly Quranic in a way that commercial or criminal law is not. The inheritance shares (4:11-12), the divorce rules (2:228-232, 65:1-7), and the waiting periods are textually explicit. Courts that replaced Islamic criminal law with European codes retained personal status courts.
The Dawoodi Bohra Context
The Dawoodi Bohra community applies a distinct madhhab in personal status matters — following the Fatimid-Ismaili school codified in the Da’a’im al-Islam of al-Nu’man ibn Muhammad, which differs in some respects from the four Sunni schools in marriage, divorce, and inheritance.
See also: Fiqh Al Mahr, Fiqh Al Nafaqah, Fiqh Al Nikah Al Fasid, Fiqh Al Irth Al Hajb, Fiqh Al Wasatiyyah