The cornerstone of the Ḥanafī position is the report transmitted by Qatādah from al-Ḥasan from Samurah that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said:
“Whoever comes to own an unmarriageable blood-relative must set him free.”
Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī, however, did not deem this ḥadīth authentic.
Mālik drew an analogy from children and parents to siblings, and therefore required that brothers and sisters be freed as well. Al-Shāfiʿī did not attach siblings to that ruling; he relied solely on the earlier ḥadīth and extended the obligation from parents to children by analogy, but no further.
The Mālikīs attempted to bolster their view by arguing that sonship and slavery are mutually exclusive qualities. They cited the words of the Exalted:
“It is not befitting the Most Merciful that He should take a son” (Maryam 19:92),
and:
“There is none in the heavens or on earth except that he comes to the Most Merciful as a servant” (Maryam 19:93).
Yet the servitude mentioned in these verses is of a different order from the legal slavery on which they build their case. Sonship and that universal servitude are intelligible, natural realities, whereas the servitude that exists among human beings by reason of ownership is a purely legal construct, not a natural one—something established by revelation, not by reason. Their proof, therefore, is weak.
What Allah Most High intends is only that son and father are equal in genus or species of existence—that is, the two beings, one a father and the other a son, are extremely close, virtually belonging to the same kind. No created thing, however, shares with Allah—glorified be He—any genus, whether near or remote; the gulf between Creator and creation is absolute. Consequently, nothing in existence can stand to Him as a son to a father. If any comparison be sought, the relation of slave to master comes nearer to reality than that of son to father, because the distance in rank between master and slave is greater than that between father and son. In truth, even these two relations are utterly dissimilar, but since among created things no relation shows a wider gap in dignity and lowliness, it is used merely as an illustration. Conversely, whoever fixes his gaze on the love, mercy, tenderness, and compassion between father and child may allow himself—following the outward wording of the Law of Jesus—to speak of people as “children of God.”
These, then, are the famous questions that pertain to emancipation which occurs without the owner’s deliberate choice.
The jurists further disagreed over a well-known issue that hinges on transmitted evidence (samāʿ). They differed about a man who, during his terminal illness or by testament after his death, frees all his slaves while owning nothing else.
Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, their respective companions, Aḥmad, and a group of scholars held that if he emancipates them while ill and has no other property, the slaves are divided into three equal portions and, after his death, one-third of them are set free by drawing lots; the same ruling applies when he bequeaths their emancipation.
Ashhab and Aṣbagh dissented from Mālik regarding outright emancipation during illness. They maintained that drawing lots is confined to the bequest, whereas emancipation effected immediately while ill is treated like the case of a mudabbar slave.
There is no dispute within the Mālikī school that when several slaves are declared mudabbar in a single statement and the estate’s one-third share cannot cover them all, each is freed in proportion to his share of that one-third.