“And when you said to the one whom Allah had favoured and you too had favoured.”

He thus explained that patronage is founded on the favour of emancipation, just as lineage is founded on the favour of begetting. Since He has forbidden transferring one’s affiliation away from the one who begot him, it is likewise forbidden to transfer it away from the one who emancipated him, for the two cases are analogous. Whoever stipulates that the buyer must emancipate the slave, while patronage belongs to someone other than the buyer, is like someone who stipulates that, if a man entering into marriage fathers a child, the child’s lineage must be ascribed to someone else. This is the meaning to which the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, pointed when he said:

“Patronage belongs only to the one who emancipates.”

Since the Book of Allah indicates, both specifically and generally, that this stipulation is forbidden, it does not fall within the covenants Allah has commanded us to fulfil, for He, glorified be He, does not command what He has forbidden.

So much for this point. Nevertheless, what seems most likely to me is that the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, intended only the first meaning: invalidating conditions that conflict with the Book of Allah, and warning against stipulating something Allah has not permitted—which would mean that He has forbidden the stipulated matter, since the Book of Allah grants general permission for whatever He has not forbidden—or against stipulating anything that conflicts with the Book of Allah, as indicated by his words:

“The Book of Allah has greater right to be followed, and Allah’s stipulation is more binding.”

Once it is clear that the general permissibility and validity of contracts and conditions rest on two foundations—the general scriptural evidence, and the rational evidence consisting of the presumption of continuity and the absence of anything establishing prohibition—this principle may not be applied to categories of