Umayya, from ʿUthmān [ibn Hādir] al-Himyarī: “A woman swore that her wealth would be devoted to the cause of Allah or to the poor, and that her slave woman would be free if she failed to do such and such. She then asked Ibn ʿUmar and Ibn ʿAbbās, and they replied, ‘As for the slave woman, she becomes free. As for what she said regarding her wealth, she must pay its zakat.’”

Abū Ishāq Ibrāhīm al-Jawzjānī said: “Divorce and manumission do not have the same status as oaths in this matter. If [they could be discharged in the same manner] as oaths, anyone who swore by them and then broke his oath would owe expiation. Yet there is no disagreement among people that no expiation is due in such cases.”

I say: Abū Ishāq reported the extent of the knowledge that had reached him on this matter. Most of those who issued fatwas at that time—among the people of Medina and Iraq, the followers of Abū Hanīfa and Mālik—ruled concerning a vow made in obstinacy or anger only that it had to be fulfilled, not that expiation could be offered. This was so even though the majority of the Followers held that expiation sufficed in such cases. Indeed, when al-Shāfiʿī issued a fatwa in Egypt permitting expiation, his opinion was regarded as exceptional among his Mālikī associates. The questioner said to him, “Abū ʿAbd Allāh, is this your position?” He replied, “It is the position of one better than me: the position of ʿAtā ibn Abī Rabāh.”

When the hadith jurists—such as al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, Ishāq, Abū ʿUbayd, Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd, Ibn Abī Shayba, ʿAlī al-Madīnī, and others like them—then ruled that an oath involving a vow could be discharged by expiation, while some distinguished such an oath from divorce and manumission for reasons we shall mention, it came about that anyone familiar with the positions of both groups knew of no disagreement concerning divorce and manumission. Nonetheless, Allah willing, we shall cite the disagreement on this matter from the Companions, the Followers, and those who came after them. Ahmad responded to what we cited from the Companions concerning expiation for an oath invoking manumission on two grounds:

The first was that Sulaymān al-Taymī alone transmitted it.