The remainder of the slave must be set free if the emancipator is solvent—except when he acquired his share involuntarily, namely by inheritance.

• Some jurists held that, once solvency is attained, the slave becomes completely free.
• Others said: no manumission is imposed at all.
• A third group maintained that, upon solvency, freedom is effected through siʿāyah, the slave’s self-redemption.
• Yet another group rejected even this.

If a master already owns the whole slave and then emancipates only a part of him, the majority of the scholars of the Ḥijāz and Iraq—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, al-Thawrī, al-Awzāʿī, Aḥmad, Ibn Abī Laylā, Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan, and Abū Yūsuf—rule that the entire slave becomes free. Abū Ḥanīfah and the literalists (Ahl al-Ẓāhir) say that only the portion expressly freed is liberated and that the slave must work to purchase the rest; this is also the view of Ṭāwūs and Ḥammād.

The majority argue that, because the Sunnah obliges a co-owner to free his partner’s share out of reverence for the institution of manumission, the obligation is even stronger when the entire ownership lies with the emancipator himself. Abū Ḥanīfah responds that the liability arises only to remove the harm inflicted on a partner; where no partner exists, no harm is present, and thus no further emancipation is required.

Their disagreement therefore turns on the underlying cause of the ruling: is it the sanctity of emancipation—which admits no division—or the prevention of harm to a partner?

The Ḥanafīs cite the report transmitted by Ismāʿīl ibn Umayyah from his father, from his grandfather, who freed half of his slave and was not rebuked by the Messenger of Allah, peace and blessings be upon him. The majority, however, rely on the narration recorded by al-Nasāʾī and Abū Dāwūd from Abū al-Malīḥ, from his father: “A man from Hudhayl emancipated his share of a slave, whereupon the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—completed the manumission and said, ‘Allah has no partner.’” This ḥadīth explicitly states the rationale adopted by the majority; an explicit rationale outweighs one that is merely inferred.

Hence their divergence stems from conflicting reports in this chapter and from competing analogical arguments.

As for emancipation prompted by mutilation (muthlah), the scholars also differ:
• Mālik, al-Layth, and al-Awzāʿī: whoever mutilates his own slave must set him free.
• Abū Ḥanīfah and al-Shāfiʿī: no manumission is imposed.
• In another view, al-Awzāʿī said: whoever mutilates another person’s slave must free him, while the majority hold that he is liable only for the reduction in the slave’s value.

Mālik and those who follow him rely on the ḥadīth of ʿAmr ibn Shuʿayb, from his father, from his grandfather: “Zinbāʿ found his slave boy with a slave woman and cut off his organ and slit his nose. He came to the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—and told him what he had done. The Prophet asked, ‘What made you do that?’ He replied, ‘He did such-and-such.’ The Prophet said, ‘Go, for you are free.’”