Ahmad said: My father said, “If a man says, ‘My slave woman is free if I do not do such-and-such,’ Ibn ʿUmar and Ibn ʿAbbās said that she becomes free. If he says, ‘All my wealth is for the poor,’ his slave woman is not included in it; [it entails expiation]. These two cases are not alike—do you not see that Ibn ʿUmar distinguished between them? Manumission and divorce cannot be discharged by expiation.”

Abū Hanīfa’s disciples say that if a man declares, “My wealth is for the poor,” he must give it in charity to the poor. The same applies if he says, “Whatever so-and-so owes me is charity.” They distinguish between saying, “If I do such-and-such, my wealth is charity,” or, “I am obliged to perform Hajj,” and saying, “Then my wife is divorced,” or, “Then my slave is free.” Their reasoning is that, in the former case, the [legal effect] of the statement is to make charity and Hajj obligatory, not to bring about their actual performance.

Accordingly, when fulfillment of the condition makes the act obligatory, expiation may substitute for that obligation, just as it may substitute for other obligations. In the early days of Islam, it served as a substitute for obligatory fasting, and feeding the poor remained a substitute for fasting for one incapable of it. Likewise, expiation may substitute for an obligatory fast owed by a deceased person, for when an obligation exists as a liability, one may be given the choice between fulfilling it and performing something else in its place.

As for manumission and divorce, the legal effect of the words is that they actually take effect. Thus, when the condition is fulfilled, the manumission and divorce take effect. Once they have taken effect, they cannot afterward be undone, because neither admits of rescission. This differs from saying, “If I do such-and-such, then I owe it to Allah to manumit a slave.” Here he has not made the manumission itself conditional; he has merely made his obligation to perform it conditional. He is therefore given the choice between carrying out the manumission he imposed upon himself and offering the expiation that serves as its substitute. Consequently, if he were to say, “When I die, my slave is free,” the slave would become free upon his death without any need