2 – If the master of an umm al-walad dies, the ḥadith of the chapter indicates that she must observe a waiting and mourning period of four months and ten days, just like a free wife.

3 – The manumission of an umm al-walad is contingent on her master’s death; she is not emancipated before that. When he dies, his death effects her freedom. Up to that moment she remains in the category of slave-women; therefore she has no formal waiting period. Instead, her womb is to be cleared by a single menstruation, which confirms that she is not pregnant if she menstruates. Should she be a non-menstruating woman, the clearance is established by the lapse of one lunar month from his death. She is neither a wife nor treated as one. This is the view of the three leading imams—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad—their followers, and a group of the early scholars.

Al-Awzāʿī and the Ẓāhirīs adopted the same conclusion drawn from the ḥadith. The Ḥanafīs, however, hold that the waiting period of an umm al-walad is three menstrual cycles, a position likewise reported from some Companions.

Ibn Rushd said, “The cause of the disagreement is that the case of the umm al-walad is not addressed explicitly in the Quran or the Sunnah, so she falls midway between a slave-woman and a free woman.”

The commentator on this book observed, “The soundest opinion is that of Aḥmad and al-Shāfiʿī: she waits for a single menstruation. This was also the view of Ibn ʿUmar, ʿUrwah, al-Qāsim ibn Muḥammad, al-Shaʿbī, and al-Zuhrī, because the default assumption is that the womb is clear and that women are not to be kept from prospective husbands; one menstruation is sufficient to establish this.”

Scholarly disagreement:
Regarding the word al-qurūʾ in Allah’s statement, “And divorced women shall wait by themselves for three qurūʾ” (Q 2:228), the scholars—early and late—have differed on its meaning, forming two main opinions.

The first opinion is that al-qurūʾ refers to intervals of purity. ʿĀʾishah said, “Al-qurūʾ are only the periods of purity.” Imām Mālik related from Ibn Shihāb: “I heard Abū Bakr ibn ʿAbd al-Raḥman…”