his personal freedom and his financial freedom; he is owned in his very person and in all his transactions by his master.

2. Emancipation (ʿitq) is the liberation of the “neck,” rescuing it from bondage. The neck is singled out—although slavery covers the entire body—because the master’s ownership is like an iron collar fastened around the slave’s neck, preventing him from acting independently; when he is freed, it is as though that collar has been removed.

3. Walāʾ al-ʿitāqah is an agnatic bond that arises from the benefaction of the emancipator toward his slave by setting him free; therefore, the walāʾ belongs to the one who performed the manumission.

4. Walāʾ thus becomes a tie like the tie of lineage, a bond and connection comparable to blood kinship, because of the similarity between them in bringing a person into being and in the strength of the relationship.

5. Just as kinship cannot be sold or given away, so too the walāʾ acquired through the favor of emancipation may neither be sold nor gifted. It passes by inheritance in only one direction: to the benefactor who freed the slave, or to those who succeed him through inheritance.

6. The person who inherits by walāʾ is first the one who actually carried out the manumission, followed by his agnatic heirs who inherit in their own right, not through others and not alongside others; for walāʾ is a basis for inheriting, not something that itself is inherited. As for the freed person, he does not inherit from his emancipator according to the majority of jurists, because the favor rests upon him, not with him.