665 – Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh  reported: “One of our men set his slave free ʿan dubur (to take effect after his own death), yet he possessed no other property. The Prophet ﷺ had the slave brought and sold him.” Agreed upon (1).

Vocabulary of the ḥadith
– ʿan dubur: with ḍamma on both the dāl and the bāʾ, literally “from the back,” the opposite of qubul (front). Here it means the master emancipated the slave but suspended the manumission until the master’s death; such a slave is called mudabbar, as will be clarified, God willing.

Points derived from the ḥadith

1. Tadbīr is the emancipation of a slave after the owner’s death, expressed by the master’s saying to his slave: “You are free after my death.” It is so named because the manumission comes at the “back end” of life.
2. The ḥadith proves the permissibility and validity of tadbīr; this ruling is unanimously accepted by the scholars.
3. A mudabbar slave is freed from one-third of the deceased’s estate, not from the entire estate, because his case is treated like a bequest, both becoming operative only after death. This is the position of the majority of scholars.
4. Selling a mudabbar slave is permissible. According to the two imams al-Shāfiʿī and Aḥmad, he may be sold unconditionally, whether there is need or not, for once one form of sale is allowed, all its forms are allowed; moreover, it resembles a bequest from which the testator may retract while alive. Some scholars, however, restrict the sale of a mudabbar slave to cases of necessity only, in light of this ḥadith.
5. A person whose provision is straitened is obliged to allocate what he has for himself and for those