discharge his debt from the property sold; or the purchaser stipulates that the seller discharge his debt out of the price paid, or something similar. Such a stipulation is more compelling than a stipulation requiring emancipation. As for the extension of emancipation to a co-owner’s share, its sole purpose is to secure complete freedom. The Lawgiver has prescribed an equivalent concerning property: the right of pre-emption. This was prescribed to give its holder full ownership, because of the harm entailed by co-ownership.

We maintain that this has been prescribed in all forms of co-ownership: a co-owner is entitled to obtain a partition. If the property itself can be divided, it is divided; otherwise, we divide the proceeds of its sale if either co-owner requests this. Completing emancipation is one instance of this, since co-ownership is ended sometimes by partition and sometimes by making ownership or freedom complete.

The underlying principle is that ownership is the legally recognized power to dispose of the property itself, analogous to physical power. One may therefore have the legal power to make one kind of disposition but not another, just as one may have the physical ability to do one thing but not another. Hence, ownership takes various forms in the revealed law, just as power takes various forms. Full ownership confers the right to dispose of the property itself through sale or gift, and the property passes to the owner’s heirs. It also confers the right to dispose of its benefits through lending, leasing, personal use, and so forth.

Yet a man may own a Zoroastrian slave woman, or slave women forbidden to him through milk-kinship, without having the right to sexual relations with them. He may, however, obtain compensation for that benefit by giving such a woman in marriage—for example, by marrying the Zoroastrian woman to a Zoroastrian man. He may also own a slave woman who has borne him a child, without having the right to sell her or give her away; nor does she pass to his heirs, according to the vast majority of Muslims. By their unanimous agreement, he has the right to have intercourse with her and to employ her services. Likewise, he may obtain compensation for these benefits by giving her in marriage and hiring out her services