Chapter: Manumission during illness, emancipation by bequest, and the manner of drawing lots.

Whoever sets a slave free while sick and then dies of that very illness, his manumission—as well as any related bequest—counts only against one-third of his estate and may not exceed it. Should he recover, the emancipation of everyone whose freedom he had decisively proclaimed while ill takes full effect.

If, while sick, a man frees six of his slaves, then dies owning nothing else and had liberated them all in a single statement, they are first divided into three equal shares and lots are drawn. One share (one-third of them) is emancipated and the other two shares remain in bondage, exactly as though he had merely bequeathed their freedom and possessed no property besides them.

The procedure for drawing lots is as follows: their value is equalized and they are arranged into three shares of identical worth. Three small slips are prepared—on one is written “share of freedom,” on the other two “share of bondage.” The slips are placed in a pouch. A man is then told, “Draw for this particular share,” while that share is pointed out to him. If the freedom slip comes out for that share, those slaves are set free and the other two shares remain enslaved. If a bondage slip appears, that share stays enslaved. Next he is told, “Draw the freedom slip for the second share.” If the freedom slip emerges, the second share is emancipated and the third stays enslaved; if the bondage slip is drawn for the second share, the third share is the one that is freed.

If he says, “One-third of my slaves are free,” lots are drawn among them and the freedom is consolidated in some of them, just as if he had said, “All of them are free.”

Mālik said: “If he says, ‘A third of each of them is free,’ then one-third of every individual slave is emancipated.” Another jurist held that in both formulations—whether he says “one-third of them” or “one-third of each of them”—a third of every slave is set free. Both opinions agree, however, that when he frees all of them, only some will in fact be liberated through the drawing of lots.

If a man bequeaths that ten of his slaves be emancipated without naming them, and he owns fifty slaves, then—by lot—one-fifth of them, namely ten, are freed. Whether the one-third share of the estate corresponds to fewer than ten slaves or to more is immaterial; only those whose names are drawn are emancipated, even if some of them die before the division takes place.