Nikkah

In Islam, marriage is a legal contract between two people. Both the groom and the bride are to consent to the marriage of their own free wills. A formal, binding contract is considered integral to a religiously valid Islamic marriage, and outlines the rights and responsibilities of the groom and bride. There must be two Muslim witnesses of the marriage contract. Divorce in Islam can take a variety of forms, some initiated by the husband and some initiated by the wife.

In addition to the usual marriage until death or divorce, there is a different fixed-term marriage known as zawāj al-mutʻah ("pleasure marriage") permitted only by the Twelver branch of Shia Islam for a pre-fixed period. There is also Nikah Misyar, a non-temporary marriage with the removal of some conditions such as living together, permitted by Sunni Muslims. Sunnis also allow Nikah urfi and some sects of Sunni allow Nikah halala.

In Islamic law, marriage is called nikah, an Arabic word whose original literal meaning is "sexual intercourse", but which already in the Quran is used exclusively to refer to the contract of marriage. In the Wehr-Cowan Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, nikah is defined as "marriage; marriage contract; matrimony, wedlock".

The marriage contract is known by different names: Literary Arabic: عقد القران ʻaqd al-qirān, " contract"; Urdu: نکاح نامہ‎ / ALA-LC: Nikāḥ-nāmah; Persian (Farsi): ازدواج (ezdevāj) (= marriage) and سند ازدواج or عقدنامه (Sǎnǎde ezdevāj; aqd nāmeh) for the certificate.

...
Wikipedia