Divorce in Islam

In Islamic law and marital jurisprudence, divorce is accepted and referred to as talaq.^[3] However, divorce is considered the most hated of all lawful things in the sight of Allah.^[4]

In the medieval Islamic world and the Ottoman Empire, the rate of divorce was higher than it is today in the modern Middle East, which now has generally low rates of divorce.^[5] In 15th century Egypt, Al-Sakhawi recorded the marital history of 500 women, the largest sample on marriage in the Middle Ages, and found that at least a third of all women in the Mamluk Sultanate of Egypt and Syria married more than once, with many marrying three or more times. According to Al-Sakhawi, as many as three out of ten marriages in 15th century Cairo ended in divorce.^[6] In the early 20th century, some villages in western Java and the Malay peninsula had divorce rates as high as 70%