Section

If someone says, “If I do it, I must then emancipate my slave,” they agreed that emancipation does not take effect merely by his doing it. However, he must emancipate the slave. This is Mālik’s position and one of the two views reported from Abū Hanīfah.

Another view is that nothing is required of him. This was held by a group of the Successors and is the position of Dāwūd and Ibn Hazm.

A further view is that he must offer expiation for an oath. This is the position of the Companions and the majority of the Successors, and the position of al-Shāfi‘ī and Ahmad. According to the well-known view reported from both, he may choose between offering expiation and emancipating the slave.

Another view is that expiation specifically is obligatory.

As for swearing by divorce, no report from the Companions has reached us despite extensive research and examination of the books of earlier and later scholars. Rather, what is attributed to them is either weak—indeed, falsely transmitted—or does not constitute evidence concerning swearing by divorce, for people did not swear by divorce in their time.

However, a number of them are reported to have held that expiation for an oath suffices when someone swears by emancipation, as when he says, “If I do such-and-such, my slave is free.” The opposite view—that the slave becomes free—has also been reported from some of these same Companions. We have discussed the chains of transmission for these reports elsewhere.

For those among the Companions and Successors who held that emancipation does not take effect, divorce would all the more not take effect, as some of the Successors explicitly stated.

Some scholars assumed that there was no disagreement concerning divorce. This led them to reverse what the evidence entails, saying that divorce takes effect, but emancipation does not. These questions have been discussed at length, with an explanation of the views held concerning them by the Companions and those who followed them