Ismāʿīl:

“Ahmad ibn Hanbal also informed us, saying: ‘ʿAbd al-Razzāq narrated to us, from Maʿmar, from Ismāʿīl ibn Umayyah, from ʿUthmān ibn Abī Hāzim, that a woman swore that her wealth would be devoted to Allah’s cause or to the poor, and her slave woman would be free, if she did not do such-and-such. She then asked Ibn ʿUmar and Ibn ʿAbbās, and they said: “As for the slave woman, she becomes free. As for her declaration concerning her wealth, she is to pay zakah on it.”’”

Abū Ishāq al-Jūzajānī said:

“Divorce and manumission do not have the legal standing of oaths in this matter. If they were treated as oaths, expiation would be obligatory upon anyone who swore by them and then broke his oath. Yet people are agreed that no expiation is due for them.”

I say: Abū Ishāq reported what had reached him of the scholarly positions on this matter. Most of those issuing fatwas at that time among the scholars of Medina and Iraq—the followers of Abū Hanīfah and Mālik—ruled that vows made in contention or anger had to be fulfilled, rather than expiated, even though most of the Successors held that expiation was due.

Indeed, when al-Shāfiʿī ruled in Egypt that expiation was due, his position was unfamiliar among his Mālikī associates. The questioner said to him, “Abū ʿAbd Allāh, is this your own view?” He replied, “It is the view of someone better than me: ʿAtāʾ ibn Abī Rabāh.”

Thus, when the hadith jurists—such as al-Shāfiʿī, Ahmad, Ishāq, Abū ʿUbayd, Sulaymān ibn Dāwūd, Ibn Abī Shaybah, ʿAlī ibn al-Madīnī, and others—ruled that expiation was due for oaths involving vows, while some distinguished these from divorce and manumission for reasons we shall mention, the result was that anyone acquainted with the views of both groups