The Book of Manumission

This book examines who may validly set a slave free and who may not; upon whom manumission is legally binding and upon whom it is not; the formulas used for emancipation, the oaths connected to it, its legal rulings, and the conditions that may attach to it. In each chapter we shall confine ourselves to the well-known questions, most of which are based on transmitted reports.

Valid Manumission

All jurists agree that the manumission carried out by an owner who enjoys full and sound proprietary rights, is of sound judgment, physically capable, and financially solvent is legally valid.

They disagreed, however, about the emancipation effected by someone whose assets are engulfed by debt, and about the manumission executed by a sick person.

1. The Insolvent Debtor
   Scholars differed as to whether a debtor whose property is wholly encumbered by debt may validly manumit his slaves. Most of the scholars of Madinah—Mālik and others—ruled that he may not; al-Awzāʿī and al-Layth said the same. The jurists of Iraq held that it is permissible until a judge places him under interdiction; such is the view of those among them who recognize interdiction (ḥajr). A permissive ruling can also be inferred from Mālik by analogy with his opinion on pledged property: he considered the pledge valid even when the mortgagor’s wealth is overwhelmed by debt, provided the judge has not yet interdicted him.

   Those who prohibit the act argue that, in such a state, the man’s wealth rightly belongs to his creditors; he therefore has no right to remove anything from it without compensation. This is the reason a judge interdicts him, and legal rulings must follow their effective causes. The interdiction itself is not a cause but a consequence of the cause, so its actual occurrence carries no additional legal weight.

   The opposite camp counters that consensus has been reached on his right to have relations with his slave-girl, impregnate her, and spend on himself and his dependants without having to return anything until the judge seizes his hands. His other transactions, they say, should be treated likewise. This is the position of al-Shāfiʿī.

2. The Minor and the Interdicted Person
   There is unanimous agreement that a person who has not yet reached puberty may not manumit—except by way of a testamentary bequest—and the same rule applies to one placed under interdiction. According to most scholars such a person may not free any of his slaves, but Mālik and the majority of his school allowed him to emancipate the mother of his child (umm walad).

3. The Sick Person
   The majority hold that if a sick man recovers, his manumission stands; but if he dies, the emancipation is charged to one-third of his estate. The Ẓāhirīs maintain that his manumission is exactly like that of a healthy person. The majority rely on the hadith of ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn wherein a man set free six of his slaves, as mentioned earlier.

Manumission Imposed Against One’s Will

Manumission becomes obligatory involuntarily for three categories:

1. A person who frees only part of a slave—this is unanimously accepted in one of its two situations.
   2–3. Two cases over which the jurists differ: (a) one who acquires ownership of someone who becomes free by that very ownership, and (b) one who has mutilated his slave.