Nikah Misyar

In Sunni Islamic law, Nikah al-Misyar (Arabic: نكاح المسيار‎‎ or more often zawaj al-misyar زواج المسيار "traveller's marriage") is a type of Sunni Nikah (marriage contract) that is ostensibly carried out with the objective of allowing a couple to engage in intercourse in a permissible (halal) manner. The husband and wife thus joined abandon several marital rights such as living together, the wife's rights to housing and maintenance money (nafaqa), and the husband's right to homekeeping and access.

Some people consider that the misyar marriage can meet the needs of young people whose resources are too limited to settle down in a separate home; of divorcees, widows or widowers, who have their own residence and their own financial resources but cannot or do not want to marry again according to the usual formula, and of slightly older people who have not experienced marriage.

Some Islamic lawyers add that this type of marriage fits the needs of a conservative society which punishes zina (fornication) and other sexual relationships which are established outside a marriage contract. Thus, some Muslim foreigners working in the Persian Gulf countries prefer to engage in misyar marriage rather than live alone for years. Many of them are actually already married with wives and children in their home country, but they cannot bring them to the region.

The Sheikh of al-Azhar mosque, Muhammad Sayyid Tantawi and theologian Yusuf Al-Qaradawi note in their writings and in their lectures that a major proportion of the men who take a spouse in the framework of the misyar marriage are already married men.

Misyar marriage fits within the general rules of marriage in Salafi law, on condition merely that it fulfill all the requirements of the Shariah marriage contract i.e.:

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