divorce except through khul' due to the restriction imposed by the prevailing Hanafi school, though some exceptions have been found. The most serious problem was abandonment, which was not recognized as grounds for judicial divorce. To address this, in some cases a man setting out for travel would leave his wife a letter authorizing talaq if he did not return within a specified period of time. In other cases, Hanafi judges invited a Maliki or Hanbali colleague to pronounce divorce, or the woman herself took the initiative to seek out a judge from one of these schools. The same approach was used to effect a divorce in cases of failure to provide maintenance. In the Ottoman Balkans a woman could file for divorce on the grounds that her husband was "not a good Muslim". Since marriages between non-Muslim men and Muslim women are forbidden under Islamic law, when a married woman converted to Islam but her husband did not, the marriage would be considered void by Muslim authorities and the woman obtained custody of the children. Seventeenth-century sources indicate that non-Muslim women throughout the Ottoman Empire used this method to obtain a divorce. Oaths Jurisprudence The husband can end marriage through three types of oaths: the oath of continence (īlāʿ and iẓhar), the denial of paternity (liʿan), and conditional ṭalāq. The first two types were pre-Islamic practices confirmed by the Quran (2:226–227 for ila, and 58:2–4 for izhar), which also makes clear that izhar is reprehensible despite being legally valid. Ila is an oath whereby the husband vows to refrain from sexual relations with his wife for at least four months. If he fulfils his oath, the marriage is dissolved; if he breaks it, the marriage continues. In the izhar (or ẓihār) oath a man declares that his wife is as sexually prohibited to him as his mother. The husband is able to break the oath and resume the marriage. Breaking either oath requires expiation by means of feeding the poor or fasting. In the li'an oath, the husband denies paternity of his wife's child. The wife is given an opportunity to take an oath denying infidelity, and if she does so and the husband persists in his accusation, the marriage is dissolved by a judge and the couple can never remarry. In the oath of conditional ṭalāq, the husband declares that he will divorce his wife if he or