As for the term of payment, the jurists agree that it may be deferred, but they differ over whether it may be stipulated as immediately due. This disagreement comes after their prior consensus that an immediate term is permissible when the slave already possesses the money in hand – a transaction they call qiṭāʿah, not mukātabah.

Mukātabah proper is the arrangement by which a slave buys his person and property from his master with wealth he will earn in the future. The point in dispute, therefore, is whether he may purchase himself from his master for a price that is immediately due even though he does not yet possess it.

Al-Shāfiʿī maintains that such wording is meaningless and imposes no obligation on the master. The later Mālikīs, on the other hand, hold that the mukātabah becomes binding; the slave may take the matter to the judge, who will apportion the sum into instalments suited to the slave’s situation.

The Mālikī proof is that the master has effectively bound himself to mukātabah for his slave but has attached a condition that is, in most cases, impossible; the contract therefore stands while the condition is struck down. The Shāfiʿī argument is that a corrupt condition nullifies the entire contract, just as when one sells a female slave on condition that she not be approached; for if the slave has no funds on hand, the arrangement renders him incapable of performance, which runs counter to the very aim of mukātabah.

In essence, the Mālikī position comes to this: one of the pillars of mukātabah is that payment be scheduled in instalments; if a stipulation is made that contradicts this pillar, the stipulation is void and the contract remains valid.

All agree that if a master says to his slave, “I have drawn up a mukātabah with you for one thousand dirhams; when you pay it you are free,” then once the slave pays, he is free.

They differ, however, when the master says merely, “I have contracted mukātabah with you for one thousand dirhams,” and says no more: does the slave become free without the added words, “When you pay it you are free”? Mālik and Abū Ḥanīfah answer in the affirmative, arguing that the term mukātabah is a legal term that implicitly carries all its rulings. Others say he is not free unless the master explicitly ties freedom to payment; al-Shāfiʿī has two opinions on the issue.

A related dispute arises between Ibn al-Qāsim and Mālik regarding a master who says to his slave, “You are free and you owe one thousand dinars.” Mālik holds that the debt is binding and the slave is free; Ibn al-Qāsim says the slave is free and the debt is not binding.

If the master says, “You are free on condition that you owe one thousand dinars,” the school again divides: Mālik rules that the slave is free and the money is owed as a normal debt; another opinion gives the slave the choice – if he chooses freedom, the debt becomes obligatory and freedom takes effect, otherwise he remains a slave; yet another view says that if he accepts, it is a mukātabah and he is manumitted upon payment. Both latter views are reported from Ibn al-Qāsim.

Mālik allows mukātabah to be contracted for a specified piece of work, and he also allows an open-ended mukātabah whose amount is referred back to the going rate for someone of the slave’s status, much as the unspecified bridal dower is determined in marriage. He further permits mukātabah based on the slave’s market value – that is, the prevailing price for someone like him at that time and place – and for that reason some state that Mālik even allows an immediate mukātabah.

There is also disagreement as to whether it is a condition of this contract that the master waive a portion of the final instalments, because they differ over the meaning of the Almighty’s words, “And give them out of the wealth of God that He has given you” (Q 24:33). For