The short answer
After a divorce, a woman who menstruates waits three qurūʾ, and the scholars agree on that.12 The schools differ on what a qurʾ is: the Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī schools count three menstruations, and the Mālikī and Shāfiʿī schools count three periods of purity, the clean time between periods.3456 If the divorce happened while you were bleeding, that bleeding is not one of the three in any school.7
The schools differ on what a qurʾ is: a menstruation or a period of purity. All four agree the count is three.
What the four schools say
-
Ḥanafī الحنفية
Three complete menstruations. A menstruation in which she was divorced is not counted; the count begins with the next one.3
-
Mālikī المالكية
Three qurūʾ, and a qarʾ is a period of purity, not a menstruation.5 The purity in which she was divorced counts as the first, even if only a moment of it remained.8
-
Shāfiʿī الشافعية
Three qurūʾ, and a qurʾ is a period of purity. If she was divorced while pure, the iddah ends as she enters her third menstruation; if she was divorced while bleeding, as she enters her fourth.6
-
Ḥanbalī الحنابلة
There are two narrations from Aḥmad. In the one al-Qāḍī called correct, and which the school's scholars follow, the qurūʾ are menstruations; in the other, they are periods of purity.4 The menstruation in which she was divorced is not counted.7
What can change this
- If the divorce happened while you were bleeding: in the Ḥanafī and Ḥanbalī schools that bleeding is not one of the three; in the Mālikī and Shāfiʿī schools the count of purities starts after it.3678
- If you are pregnant, the iddah ends at delivery instead.9
- If your periods have stopped, or you have never had them, or you are past them, the count is different; see those questions.1011
Sources
- 1
Qurʾān, al-Baqarah 2:228
- 2
Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Ḥanbalī), 8:100
- 3
Ibn ʿĀbidīn, Radd al-Muḥtār ʿalā al-Durr al-Mukhtār (Ḥanafī), 3:505
- 4
Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Ḥanbalī), 8:101
- 5
al-Dardīr, al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr ʿalā Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, with Ḥāshiyat al-Dasūqī (Mālikī), 2:469
6 more sources, 6 to 11
- 6
al-Nawawī, Minhāj al-Ṭālibīn (Shāfiʿī), p. 253
- 7
Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Ḥanbalī), 8:102
- 8
al-Dardīr, al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr ʿalā Mukhtaṣar Khalīl, with Ḥāshiyat al-Dasūqī (Mālikī), 2:472
- 9
Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Ḥanbalī), 8:117
- 10
Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Ḥanbalī), 8:111
- 11
Ibn Qudāmah, al-Mughnī (Ḥanbalī), 8:105