illness is less meritorious than emancipation while one is in good health. Thus, if a person says to his slave, “You are free after my death,” it is valid; when he dies, the slave is emancipated. However, he is emancipated only after the debt has been settled, and only from one-third or less of the estate. Its ruling is therefore that of a bequest: the slave is not emancipated unconditionally.

If the master dies leaving behind a slave whose emancipation was made contingent upon his death, and the slave is worth ten thousand riyals while the master owes a debt of ten thousand riyals, the slave is not emancipated, because the debt takes precedence over this. For this reason, the Prophet ﷺ sold the slave whose emancipation had been made contingent upon his master’s death in order to settle his master’s debt (1).

If a master makes his slave’s emancipation contingent upon his death, and the slave is worth ten thousand riyals while the master owes a debt of five thousand riyals and owns nothing besides this slave, then half of the slave is allocated to the debt, and one-third of the remaining half is emancipated—that is, one-sixth of the slave in total. The remainder belongs to the heirs. The slave is therefore sold on the basis that one-sixth of him is free; the debt is paid, and, of the remaining sale price, one-third belongs to the slave because he earned it through his free portion, while the remainder belongs to the heirs.

If he makes a slave’s emancipation contingent upon his death, and the slave is worth ten thousand riyals while he has only five thousand riyals besides him, then the total estate is fifteen thousand riyals. One-third of it is five thousand riyals, which is half the slave’s value, so half of him is emancipated. In this case, according to some scholars, the slave is required to work to pay for his remaining freedom until he becomes fully free.