my property elsewhere remains safe, I undertake to free such-and-such slaves and give such-and-such in charity.” The person making this conditional undertaking may seek only to receive the money, have the slave returned, and ensure the soundness of the manumission and the safety of the property. He undertakes the consequence only as something given in exchange, like a seller whose sole purpose is to receive the price and who undertakes to hand over the item sold in return. This type thus resembles the exchange involved in sale and hire contracts.

The same applies when he makes divorce a punishment for her, saying, for example, “If you strike my mother, you are divorced,” or “If you leave the house, you are divorced.” In divorce in return for compensation, he gives her a divorce in exchange for money, because she wants the divorce; here, he repays her disobedience with divorce.

The second type is exemplified by a man saying to his wife, “When you become free of menstruation, you are divorced”; or to his slave, “When I die, you are free,” or “When the year is complete, you are free”; or saying, “then my property is to be given in charity.” These and similar conditional declarations merely specify a time. This type is comparable to an immediately effective declaration: in both cases, divorce or manumission is intended, but here it is simply deferred until the specified time. It resembles deferring payment of a debt, or postponing divorce from one time to another for some purpose served by the delay—not in exchange for something, nor to reinforce a request or an assertion.

For this reason, jurists of our school and others have said: suppose a man swears that he will not swear an oath, saying, for example, “By Allah, I will not swear an oath on your divorce,” or “If I swear an oath on your divorce, my slave is free,” or “you are divorced.” If he then says, “If you enter,” or “If you do not enter,” or something similar intended to encourage or prevent an action, he has sworn an oath. If, however, it is merely a conditional declaration, such as “When the sun rises, you are divorced,” or “If the sun rises,” they disagree. The followers of al-Shāfiʿī say that he has not sworn an oath, whereas the followers of Abū Hanīfa and al-Qādī in al-Jāmiʿ say that he has.