—in every one of these cases the slave is emancipated, and the right of walāʾ (clientage) remains with the master. Two divergent reports from Mālik exist as to whether freedom is effected automatically by the very act itself. All of this applies when the master deliberately inflicts the harm with intent. If, however, he merely meant to discipline the slave and some such injury happened to occur unintentionally, and it is established that the slave remains sound, emancipation is not required.
Likewise, if the slave subsequently goes mad, contracts leprosy, or suffers any affliction that destroys his faculties, the master is not obliged to free him, yet he must still provide the slave’s maintenance as long as he does not set him free.
When a master emancipates a slave, any property the slave owns accompanies him unless the master expressly excludes it; the same rule applies when the master orders his emancipation in a bequest. If that slave owns a female slave who is pregnant by him, the child she carries is not freed along with its father, and even if, after becoming free, he manumits her, she is not set free until she delivers.
Whoever emancipates a pregnant female slave sets free both her and the child in her womb. Whoever emancipates only the unborn child of his slave, the child becomes free upon birth. The owner may not sell the pregnant slave before she gives birth, whether he is pressed by a debt arising from a wrongful act or his heirs wish to sell her after his death; Mālik has two opinions—one permitting and one prohibiting such a sale.
If a man frees a female slave who is owed a dower by her husband, that dower belongs to her like any other property of hers. If a master owes his slave a debt, the debt remains payable when the slave is freed, unless, at the moment of manumission, the master brings witnesses that he has already reclaimed the slave’s property and the debt.
In obligatory manumissions (raqabah), only a believing slave who is free of disqualifying defects may be used—defects such as blindness, the loss of an eye, deafness, paralysis, insanity, castration, total emasculation, being bedridden, or severe lameness. Mālik’s companions differed regarding the deaf-mute and the one-eyed slave: Ashhab judged the deaf-mute unacceptable for obligatory manumission; Ibn al-Qāsim allowed it, while Mālik disliked it. ʿAbd al-Malik ruled that a one-eyed slave is impermissible, by analogy with sacrificial animals, whereas the rest allowed it.
The emancipation of a nursing infant is valid. It is not valid, however, in obligatory manumission to free a relative whose emancipation would automatically follow from mere ownership, nor anyone who already possesses a share of freedom. Whoever voluntarily frees a defective slave or a dhimmī, his act is binding and valid. A dhimmī is not bound by an oath to emancipate a slave if the breach of that oath occurs after he has embraced Islam.