The Shāfiʿīs ground their position on the argument that, since the children are not liberated when the mother is freed by an immediate, unconditional manumission, then it is even more obvious that they are not liberated when her manumission is merely deferred and made conditional. They also cite the unanimous agreement that when emancipation is bequeathed specifically to a female slave, her children are not included in that bequest.

The majority, by contrast, assign a certain sanctity to tadbīr and therefore require that the child follow the mother, drawing an analogy with the case of a slave on a kitābah contract. This majority opinion is reported from ʿUthmān, Ibn Masʿūd, and Ibn ʿUmar, while the view of al-Shāfiʿī is transmitted from ʿUmar ibn ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz, ʿAtāʾ ibn Abī Rabāḥ, and Makḥūl.

Mālik’s doctrine may be summarized thus: whatever the mother’s condition, her child shares it. If she is free, the child is free; if she is under a kitābah contract, so is the child; if she is mudabbara, the child is likewise; if she has been promised emancipation at a fixed term, the child is promised the same. The child of an umm walad is in her very status as well. The Ẓāhirīs dissent from this rule, although Mālik extends it even to the partially emancipated slave.

The scholars unanimously agree that every child born within legal wedlock follows the mother in slavery, freedom, and the intermediate contracts that lead to freedom—save only the two disputed situations: tadbīr, and the child of a slave-woman whose husband is an Arab freeman. They also concur that every child born of concubinage (milk yamīn) follows the father: if he is free, the child is free; if he is a slave, the child is a slave; if he is on kitābah, so is the child.

They disagreed, however, about a male mudabbir who takes a concubine and fathers a child. Mālik ruled that the child assumes the father’s status—that is, he too becomes mudabbir. Al-Shāfiʿī and Abū Ḥanīfah held that the child does not follow the father in tadbīr.

Mālik’s proof is the consensus that in all instances of concubinage the child follows the father; he therefore applies that consensus analogically to the present case. The Shāfiʿīs reply that the child of a mudabbir counts as part of the mudabbir’s property, and the master is entitled to seize any property the mudabbir owns; they therefore deny that the child partakes of his father’s status. Mālik, for his part, maintains that a mudabbir’s property is set free along with him.

Fourth Category: Partial tadbīr. Earlier we discussed the case in which one of two joint owners declares tadbīr over his share of a slave while the other does not; that discussion properly belongs here and should be transferred to this section. As for a man who declares tadbīr over only a portion of a slave he owns outright, the ruling is that the tadbīr is deemed to cover the entire slave, by analogy with the Mālikī ruling on partial emancipation.

Fifth Category: Acts that nullify tadbīr. One issue under this heading is their dispute over whether debt invalidates tadbīr. Mālik and al-Shāfiʿī say that the existence of a debt does annul it. Abū Ḥanīfah says it does not; rather, the slave must work to repay the debt, whether the debt equals the full value of the slave or only part of it.