of Ahmad’s followers. Some of al-Shāfi‘ī’s followers claim that this is his sole position on the matter. As for the dower, he is not obliged to pay it according to the schools of Ahmad, Mālik and others. Al-Shāfi‘ī has two views on this, one being that he must pay it, which is also Abū Hanīfah’s position. In every case where the slave woman does not become an umm walad, she may be sold.

He was asked:

A woman, while in sound health, gave her son a charitable gift consisting of a share of everything capable of division, over a period increasing every ten years. The donor then died. During his own lifetime, the recipient subsequently gave his son everything his mother had given him. After the first donor’s death, all of this was established before a judge, who issued a ruling accordingly. May the remaining heirs have this invalidated on the grounds of his continued residence there after it had been handed over to her son, the recipient, or not?

He replied—may Allah have mercy on him:

If this charitable gift remained in the donor’s possession until the donor died, it became void according to the well-known positions of all the imams. If the judge established that the transaction had taken place, his establishing that fact does not entail its validity. As for ruling that it is valid under these circumstances when the donor has heirs, no knowledgeable judge would do so—unless the case is not as described, in which event he would not be ruling on this matter. But if the donor had transferred the charitable gift