always applies to an oath that admits expiation. He therefore required emancipation and prescribed expiation in the other cases.”

I say:

This is what Imam Ahmad—may Allah be pleased with him—stated in his answers. Yet his explicit statements in several places imply that expiation for an oath suffices.

He expressly stated in several places that an exception clause applies [only] (1) to an oath that admits expiation. He also expressly stated that, when someone swears an oath involving divorce or emancipation, his position is that an exception clause does not benefit him; for he may append an exception clause, unlike when he directly effects divorce or emancipation, concerning which there is only one position. This was also reported from Ibn ʿAbbās, and it is the position of Mālik and others.

Shaykh Abū Hāmid al-Isfarāyīnī and his followers attributed to Ahmad a distinction between divorce and emancipation regarding exception clauses. This is a mistaken attribution to Ahmad. Rather, this is the position of the Qadariyyah, who maintain that divine will means divine command, and that emancipation is an act of obedience, unlike divorce. Thus, if someone says, “His slave is free, if Allah wills,” emancipation takes effect; but if he says, “His wife is divorced, if Allah wills,” divorce does not take effect. They narrated a hadith to this effect, with a chain of transmission through Syrian narrators from Muʿādh. It is among the reports fabricated by the Qadariyyah who lived in Syria.

The source of this mistake is that Ahmad said concerning someone who says, “If I come to own so-and-so, he is free, if Allah wills,” and subsequently acquires him, that the slave becomes free. He also said, concerning someone who says, “If I marry so-and-so, she is divorced, if Allah wills,”