6 – On the surface, the two ḥadiths appear to differ about whether the entire slave is set free when the person who initiates the manumission is insolvent and the slave is then required to earn (istisʿāʾ) the outstanding value.

7 – Reconciling the two ḥadiths:
The outward sense of the first ḥadith is that whoever frees his share of a jointly owned slave thereby emancipates only that share. If he is solvent, the remainder of the slave is also set free and he must pay his partner the market value of that share. If he is insolvent, the partner’s share is not freed and the slave becomes partially free and partially enslaved.

The second ḥadith, however, indicates that when the emancipator is insolvent the whole slave is nonetheless freed; the slave must then earn an amount equal to the value of the remaining share and hand it over to the partner.

Those who act upon the literal sense of the first ḥadith include the leading imams Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad—according to the famous position in his school—together with the Ẓāhirīs. Their proof is the plain wording of the ḥadith, and they consider the additional clause, “If he has no wealth, the slave is valued at a fair price, then the slave is required to earn it without being overburdened,” to be an interpolation (mudraj).

Al-Ḥāfiẓ (Ibn Ḥajar) stated that the mention of istisʿāʾ is interpolated. Al-Nasāʾī said: “I was informed that Hammām narrated it and made this wording—the reference to earning—the statement of Qatādah.” Al-Ismāʿīlī said the same, and Ibn al-Mundhir and al-Khaṭṭābī definitely regarded it as Qatādah’s own insertion.

The author of Sharḥ Bulūgh, however, refuted every claim of interpolation, arguing that the agreement of the two Shaykhs—al-Bukhārī and Muslim—on attributing the clause to the Prophet places it in the highest tier of authenticity.

For this reason Imām Aḥmad, in one of the two reports from him, adopted this additional wording, and so did some of his followers, among them Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah and Ibn al-Qayyim,