Marriage, while an institution of critical and central importance in the Islamic legal landscape of social relations, was not required or necessarily expected to be a permanent one. Rather, Islamic legal discourses and practices recognized that, upon occasion, marital relations might be better terminated; there is no moral dictum of “till death do us part” and no legal insistence on the indissolubility of the marital tie as in much of the Christian tradition. A number of verses in the Qurʾan address the question of divorce in a tone that suggests that ending a marriage, while not to be taken lightly, may be preferable to continuing in a relationship that does not fulfill its purposes. Men are enjoined, insofar as their wives are concerned, to “retain them honorably or set them free honorably” (2:231), but cautioned against taking overly hasty decisions to divorce their wives: “if you are averse to them, it is possible you may be averse to a thing and God set in it much good” (4:19). Clearly marriages can fail and relationships can sour, and a man may ultimately decide, as verse 4:19 continues, to “exchange a wife in place of another.” Before such a serious decision is reached, however, the Qurʾan counsels reconciliation if possible: