and I did not enter into the contract with you except on that basis.

Second: they have allowed a stipulation to precede the contract in marriage. It may therefore be said: what difference is there between this and that? If a stipulation may precede the contract in marriage, then sale is the same; there is no difference.

Thus, stipulations in a sale are legally effective whether they accompany the contract, are made afterwards during the period of the two options, or were agreed upon beforehand.

“Some of them are valid, such as a pledge, deferring the price, or stipulating that a male slave be literate, castrated, or Muslim, or that a slave-girl be a virgin.”

His statement, “Some of them are valid”: the word “some” here indicates part of a whole. Some grammarians maintain that this partitive expression is a noun, since it carries the meaning of “some.” According to this view, “some” is the subject and “valid” its predicate. According to the well-known grammatical view, the phrase means “of them,” functioning as a prepositional phrase placed before its delayed subject, “valid.”

Valid is the opposite of unsound. The criterion for a valid stipulation is that it does not contradict what the contract entails. If it contradicts what the contract entails, it is not valid. We do not say, “that which does not contradict the contract in general,” because every stipulation in a sale contradicts the contract in general.

For example, if you sell me something, the implication of the contract is that I may dispose of it through sale, pledging it as security, leasing it out, dedicating it as an endowment, and all other forms of disposition that I am legally entitled to make