and one-third of the other slave is likewise set free. According to a different opinion, the name of every slave is written on a slip; the first slip drawn wins complete emancipation for its owner, and one-third of the second slave is also freed.
I say: the stronger of the two views is the first, and Allah knows best. Both positions treat the lottery as recommended, although some jurists hold it to be obligatory.
If, after we have freed some slaves by drawing lots, fresh assets are discovered so that the value of all the slaves now fits within the testator’s allowable one-third, they are all emancipated. From the day of their emancipation their earnings belong to them, and the heir may not seek reimbursement for what he spent on their upkeep. If the newly found wealth will free only one additional slave, another lottery is conducted. Whoever gains freedom through that draw is deemed free from the very day of the drawing; his value is assessed at that time, and any earnings he makes from that day forward are his own and are not charged to the one-third. Those who remain in bondage are valued as of the day of the testator’s death, and that value—together with whatever earnings of theirs existed before death, not what accrues afterward—falls upon the remaining two-thirds of the estate.
Suppose a man emancipates three slaves, owns nothing else, and each slave is worth 100, while one of them has earned a further 100. A lottery is held. If freedom falls to the slave who has the 100, he is emancipated and the 100 is his. If it falls to another slave, that slave is freed and a second draw is conducted. Should this second draw favor the remaining third slave, one-third of him is freed; if it favors the first slave—the one with the earnings—one-quarter of him is emancipated together with one-quarter of his 100 in earnings.
Section
When a slave attains freedom through someone—by outright manumission, a contractual emancipation (kitābah), a post-mortem manumission (tadbīr), child-bearing emancipation (umm walad), kinship, or the spread of emancipation to him (sarāyah)—his patronage (walāʾ) belongs to that person and, after him, to that person’s agnatic heirs. A woman inherits by patronage only from a freedman of hers, his children, and those whom he in turn emancipates. Thus, if her father is freed by her, then he frees a slave who later dies—after the father’s death and leaving no heir—that slave’s property goes to the daughter, while the patronage reverts to the highest agnate.
Anyone who has ever been in bondage has patronage only for the one who freed him and that emancipator’s agnates. If a female freedwoman owns a male slave who marries and she bears a child, the child’s patronage belongs to the mother’s patron. Should the father later be emancipated, the patronage transfers to his patrons. If the father dies in bondage and the grandfather is afterward freed, the patronage passes to the grandfather’s patrons; the same applies if the grandfather is freed while the father remains a slave. Should the father be emancipated after that, the patronage shifts back to his patrons—though another view holds that it stays with the mother’s patron until the father dies, at which point it moves to the grandfather’s patrons.
If that child later acquires ownership of his father, he draws to himself the patronage of his brothers, and—according to the sounder opinion—his own patronage as well. I say: the sound view transmitted in the texts is that he does not draw it. Allah knows best.