said concerning it: ‘Make expiation for your oath and emancipate your slave woman.’ This is an addition that must be accepted. It is also possible that she owned no slave other than that woman.”

I say: Their stated analogy is undermined by all the other commitments made contingent upon a condition: giving property in charity, walking to Mecca, making sacrificial offerings, saying, “If I do such-and-such, I shall be obliged to emancipate a slave or grant a divorce,” or saying, “If he does such-and-such, he is a Jew or a Christian,” and similar statements. These all take the form of a condition, yet they regard them as oaths on account of their meaning. The basis upon which he proceeds is itself disputed, for there is disagreement concerning divorce. Indeed, if they do not deem emancipation to take effect, even though it is an act of devotion, then all the more reason not to deem divorce to take effect. Abū Thawr did not concede the ruling concerning divorce, but said:

“If there is consensus on this, consensus is most deserving of being followed. Otherwise, analogy dictates that it is like emancipation.”

Yet it is known that there is no consensus on this matter.

As for the addition he mentioned in the report of Abū Rāfiʿ—that they said, “Emancipate your slave woman”—this is an error. No one who narrated this report mentioned that they said, “Emancipate your slave woman.” Ahmad, al-Jūzajānī, al-Athram, Ibn Abī Shaybah, Harb al-Kirmānī, and several other compilers narrated it, but none mentioned this. Ahmad’s statements in the general body of his responses show that he did not report these words from them. Rather, his response was that only al-Taymī mentioned the oath involving the slave’s emancipation. Abū Muhammad quoted this from al-Khallāl’s al-Jāmiʿ, and al-Khallāl mentioned it within the account of a question transmitted by Abū Tālib