batil marriage
Under Muslim (Hanafi) law a marriage is batil (void) when it violates a permanent or absolute prohibition: marriage within the prohibited degrees of consanguinity, affinity or fosterage, or marriage with the wife of another man still subsisting. Such a marriage is a nullity from the start.
It creates no civil rights between the parties: no right to dower if unconsummated, no mutual inheritance, and the children are illegitimate. Contrast a fasid (irregular) marriage, which breaches only a temporary or remediable impediment, such as marrying a fifth wife or a woman during iddat, or marrying without witnesses; it can be regularised, and if consummated it gives dower and legitimacy to the children.
Example
A Muslim man's marriage with his wife's mother is a batil marriage, because affinity is a permanent bar, so the children of it would be illegitimate.
See also
fasid marriage · nikah · muta marriage · degrees of prohibited relationship
Read more in the study notes
- Hindu marriage and the conditions of a valid marriage (Family Law I - Hindu Law)
- Muslim marriage: nature, essentials and kinds (Family Law II - Mohammedan Law)
- Muslim marriage (nikah, mehr, talaq) and Christian marriage (Sociology - Indian Society Continuity and Change)