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According to Mālik’s school, a slave owns whatever his master or anyone else grants him, unless his master takes it from him. His ownership is therefore unlike that of a free person, whose property no one may lawfully take without his willing consent. Nevertheless, in Mālik’s view it belongs to the slave: with his master’s permission, he may take a female slave from among that property as a concubine and have intercourse with her by right of ownership. Were that property not considered his own in Mālik’s view, intercourse by right of ownership would not be permissible for him, because Allah, glorified and exalted, has permitted sexual relations only through marriage or ownership. Allah Most High says:

“And those who guard their chastity [al-Mu’minūn: 5], except with their wives or those whom their right hands possess, for then they are free from blame [al-Mu’minūn: 6]. But whoever seeks beyond that—those are the transgressors.” [al-Mu’minūn: 7]

On this basis, Mālik exempted the master from paying zakat on his slave’s property. He also held that if someone swears an oath making the emancipation of his slaves conditional upon its breach, and then breaks it, the slaves owned by his slaves are not emancipated. This is the underlying principle of his school.

As for his ruling that, if a slave acquires someone who would automatically become free upon being acquired by the slave’s master, that person becomes free; and his ruling that someone who swears not to ride another man’s animal, but then rides an animal belonging to that man’s slave, has broken his oath—some have regarded these rulings as inconsistent with his position that a slave can own property, and as departures from his underlying principle. This is incorrect. He deemed the oath broken by riding the slave’s animal only because riding it is not permissible—even with the slave’s permission—without his master’s permission; and the slightest grounds suffice to establish a breach of an oath.

Likewise, he ruled that those acquired by the slave who would become free upon acquisition by the master are emancipated because the master has the power to take them from the slave. Since he has that power, they become free, for, by consensus, they would become free if he did take them. This therefore follows the disagreement concerning a man who purchases someone whose acquisition entails emancipation while retaining an option to rescind the purchase. This disagreement does not, however, extend to zakat on a slave’s property or to the emancipation of the slaves owned by one’s slaves upon breach of an oath: the breach of the oath and the obligation of zakat have already arisen before the property is taken, so taking it entails no obligation.

Al-Shāfi‘ī, Abū Hanīfa and their followers held that a slave cannot own anything under any circumstances. In their view, all property in his possession belongs solely to his master. They therefore did not permit him