Abū Ḥanīfah and his associates maintain, in the case of immediate and unconditional manumission (al-ʿitq al-mubattal), that when the estate’s legal third is too small to cover all the slaves, one third of each slave is set free.

Others hold: rather, one third of the entire group of slaves is to be emancipated.

Among this latter camp, some assess the third according to market value—this is the view of Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī—while others look only to head-count.

Accordingly, Mālik rules that if there are, say, six slaves, one third of the total value must be freed, which may result in two slaves, or fewer, or more being manumitted; the choice is made by drawing lots after the slaves have been compelled to divide themselves into three equal shares.

Another group argues that the decisive factor is number: if there are six slaves, two are freed; if, for example, there are seven, two and one third of a slave are freed.

The scholars of the Ḥijāz rely on what the Basrans have related from ʿImrān ibn Ḥuṣayn:

“A man freed six slaves at the time of his death, owning nothing else. The Messenger of Allah—peace and blessings be upon him—was summoned; he divided them into three parts, drew lots among them, freed two and left four in bondage.”

Al-Bukhārī and Muslim transmit this report with complete chains, whereas Mālik records it in mursal form.

The Ḥanafīs, for their part, invoke their settled principle of rejecting solitary reports (āḥād) whenever these run counter to foundational rules established by mass transmission (tawātur).

Their reasoning is that the master obligated full freedom for each slave; had he possessed other assets, that emancipation would have taken effect by consensus. Lacking such assets, it should still take effect for every slave up to the extent of the disposable third. Yet this maxim is not expressly grounded in the sharʿī principles governing the issue.

One may reply to them: if one third of every slave is emancipated, both the heirs and the partially freed slaves are harmed, and the Law obliges anyone who effects a partial manumission to complete it. Because completion for all of them in their individual persons is impossible here, whenever value, rather than number, is used as the criterion, the ruling ends in partial emancipation. Hence it is preferable to regard the number, which is the plain import of the ḥadīth. The portion set free in each slave is a right owed to Allah, and thus it ought to be consolidated in specific persons, its basis being a right owed to human beings.

The jurists also differed over the property of a slave once he is emancipated: to whom does it belong?

• One group said: the property reverts to the master.
• Another said: the property accompanies the freed slave.

The first view is reported from Ibn Masʿūd among the Companions and is adopted by Abū Ḥanīfah, al-Thawrī, Aḥmad, and Isḥāq.

The second is reported from Ibn ʿUmar, ʿĀʾishah, al-Ḥasan, ʿAṭāʾ, Mālik, and the scholars of Madinah.

Their evidence is the ḥadīth of Ibn ʿUmar in which the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said:

“Whoever emancipates a slave, the slave’s property goes with him, unless the master stipulates otherwise.”

As for the wording of manumission, most jurists classify the expressions into explicit and implicit.

Explicit expressions include statements such as, “You are free,” or, “You are enfranchised,” and similar formulations; by unanimous agreement of the scholars, these utterances bind the master irrevocably.