the husband stipulated that his penis had been amputated or that he was impotent, or the woman stipulated that she had a vaginal obstruction or was insane, such a stipulation would be valid by agreement among the jurists. They have thus agreed that a stipulation reducing what the contract otherwise entails is valid, but they have disagreed over a stipulation that adds to it in this context, as I have explained to you. Abū Hanīfa’s school holds that a husband has no right to annul a marriage on account of either a defect or a stipulated condition. As for the dower, it may exceed or fall below the customary dower by agreement.

Likewise, most of the early Muslims—or many of them—the hadith jurists, and Mālik according to one of the two reports from him, permit the husband’s marital rights to be restricted. Thus, the woman may stipulate that he not move her from her town or her home, and that her rights be increased beyond those granted by an unqualified contract, [such as his restricting] himself to her alone by neither marrying another woman nor taking a concubine. According to a group of the early Muslims, Abū Hanīfa, al-Shāfiʿī, and Mālik in the other report, such a stipulation is invalid. According to Abū Hanīfa and al-Shāfiʿī, however, it does affect the designation of the dower.

The sound analogy in this area, which accords with the principles of Ahmad and other hadith jurists, is that stipulating either an addition to or a reduction from what an unqualified contract entails is permissible unless Islamic law prohibits it. Accordingly, just as an addition to the tangible property or benefit forming the subject matter of the contract—or a reduction from it—is as I have described, the same applies to increasing or reducing the entitlement conferred by the contract. Thus, if the purchaser is required to emancipate the slave, dedicate the property as a charitable endowment for the seller or another person, use the property to discharge a debt he owes to a specified or unspecified person, use it to assist his relatives, or undertake something similar, this is a stipulation requiring a disposition intended in its own right. The same applies whether the charitable disposition is required or voluntary.

As for distinguishing manumission from other dispositions on the ground that manumission possesses a special merit which