• “Walāʾ belongs only to the one who sets the slave free”: this is an exclusive construction, indicating that the walāʾ arising from emancipation—and all that follows from it in terms of agnatic support, mutual aid, inheritance, and similar rights—reverts to the person who bestowed the favor of manumission and thereby became the cause of the slave’s freedom.
His words “more deserving and firmer” and “to the one who manumits” display sajʿ, rhymed prose, which is one of the Arabic rhetorical adornments. It beautifies speech so long as it is not contrived; the Prophet ﷺ forbade only the affected sajʿ of the soothsayers because of its artificiality.
• Walāʾ: the verb wālā-hu, yuwālī-hi, muwālātan means “he supported and assisted him.” Linguistically, walāʾ (with an open wāw and a long ā) denotes kinship. In legal usage it refers to an agnatic bond created by the emancipator’s favor upon his slave through manumission.
Points derived from the ḥadith
This ḥadith is weighty and immensely beneficial, both for the rulings it contains and for the unique insights it gathers. Some scholars have produced independent monographs on it, deriving more than four hundred separate lessons. We shall confine ourselves to summarizing the most obvious rulings:
1 – The outline of the incident is that a female slave belonging to one of the households of Medina, named Barīrah, purchased her freedom from her owners for nine uqiyyahs of silver, paying one uqiyyah each year. She sought ‘Ā’ishah’s help in settling the debt. ‘Ā’ishah said to her, “Go to your owners and tell them that I am willing to pay the entire sum at once on condition that your walāʾ will be exclusively mine.” Barīrah relayed the offer, but they refused unless the walāʾ remained theirs. When the Prophet ﷺ learned of this he said to ‘Ā’ishah, “Buy her and stipulate that the walāʾ is theirs, for walāʾ belongs only to the one who actually manumits.” He then addressed the people, forbade them from unlawful conditions, informed them that any condition not found in the Book of Allah is null and void, and made it clear that walāʾ is for the emancipator.
2 – The permissibility of concluding a kitābah contract with a slave, for it is a means of delivering him from bondage, which is among