37 – The Book of the Mukatab (Slave on a Manumission Contract)
When a master concludes a manumission contract (kitābah) with his male or female slave for a specified sum and the slave accepts, the slave becomes a mukatab. The price may be stipulated as immediately due, deferred, or divided into installments. It is likewise valid to contract with a minor slave provided the child has sufficient understanding of buying and selling.
Once the kitābah is valid, the mukatab leaves the master’s physical control, though not his ownership. Therefore he may buy, sell, and travel, but he may not marry without the master’s permission, nor give gifts or charity except something trivial, and he may not stand surety for anyone’s debt.
If a child is born to the mukatab from a female slave who belongs to him, the child is incorporated into his kitābah; the child’s legal status matches his, and its earnings belong to him.
If the master marries his male slave to his slave-girl and later places both of them under kitābah, then she bears him a child, that child is incorporated into her kitābah, and its earnings belong to her.
Should the master have intercourse with his female mukatab, he must pay the statutory indemnity (ʿaqar). If he injures her or her child, he is liable for the compensation; and if he destroys any of her property, he must reimburse its value.
If the mukatab purchases his enslaved father or son, that relative enters into his kitābah. If he purchases the mother of his child, her child likewise enters the kitābah and she may not be sold. If he purchases another close relative with whom marriage is permanently forbidden but who is not an umm walad, such a relative does not enter the kitābah according to Abū Ḥanīfah.
When the mukatab fails to pay an installment, the judge investigates his circumstances. If he has a collectable debt or property that can quickly be brought forward, the judge does not hasten to declare him incapable; he waits two or three days. If he has no such means and the master requests that he be declared incapable, the judge does so and annuls the kitābah according to Abū Ḥanīfah, may Allah have mercy on him, while the two disciples said: