the sale of her services, for this protected status applies not only to her person but also to her services. It would have required her immediate and irrevocable emancipation, but this was prevented by the fact that, since her protected status arose through intercourse, it could not prohibit intercourse, which was its very origin. If this is so, Mālik’s position, may Allah have mercy on him, is correct, and she may be put to work only at light, unstrenuous tasks.
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A slave woman who has borne her master’s child must be emancipated from the estate as a whole upon his death because her protected status entitles her to freedom. Her emancipation is deferred only so that he is not deprived of his right to intercourse with her. This is also reported in the hadith. Once he dies, she is free, which requires that her emancipation be charged against the estate as a whole rather than its one-third portion. Thus, she may not be sold to settle debts, either during her master’s lifetime or after his death. If he fathers a child by her while his debts encompass all his wealth, his creditors have no claim against her, unlike the case of emancipation.
The distinction between emancipation and a slave woman’s bearing her master’s child is that emancipation is the emancipator’s own act and undertaking. That very act removes the slave from his ownership. Someone whose debts exhaust his wealth may not relinquish ownership of his property without compensation, since doing so destroys his creditors’ assets. By contrast, conception is neither the act nor the undertaking of the man who has intercourse, nor does it occur at his will and choice. Allah, Exalted is He, has permitted His servants to have intercourse with their slave women, just as He has permitted them to have intercourse with their wives. He, Most High, says:
“Those who guard their chastity” [al-Mu’minūn: 5], “except with their wives or those their right hands possess, for then they are free from blame” [al-Mu’minūn: 6].
When creditors enter into dealings with a man, they know that he may exercise the permission Allah Most High has granted him to have intercourse with his slave women, and they deal with him on that basis. If his women become pregnant by him, this is a misfortune that befalls the creditors from Allah, not something brought about by the man’s own act or undertaking. It is like death, which is Allah’s act and in which no created being has any agency.
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His statement that his slave woman’s pregnancy is by him is accepted, even if his liabilities are wholly consumed by debts. But if he says that she has borne him a child when she has no children with her, or that she has miscarried his child, his statement is not accepted, and she is sold to satisfy the creditors unless