—bequeath to his son the walāʾ he had acquired; rather, the walāʾ passed to his paternal half-brother and not to the son, for walāʾ invariably ascends to the senior relative.

If a man dies after emancipating a client and leaves agnatic heirs, the one who is closest to him, in terms of the emancipation, on the day he dies is the most entitled to the walāʾ. Neither the grandfather nor the father has any share in the inheritance of walāʾ when a son or a brother is present, and in Mālik’s view a brother’s son outranks the grandfather in regard to walāʾ, even though in ordinary inheritance the grandfather bars all the brothers’ sons.

When the Qurʾānic sharers have received their fixed portions and no agnatic heir by blood remains, whatever is left of the estate goes to the emancipator; if there is no emancipator, it reverts to the public treasury.

If a male slave has sons by a free wife and is then liberated, he draws the walāʾ of his sons to his former master. Should the father himself be a slave while his own father is free, that free grandfather draws to himself the walāʾ of the grandchildren born to the free woman and inherits from them as long as their father remains a slave. If the father is later set free, the walāʾ returns to his masters; but if he dies while still a slave, both the walāʾ and the estate go to the grandfather. No brother, uncle, or any other relative can draw walāʾ—only the father, and, failing him, the grandfather.

The patrons of the son of a freed woman who has undergone liʿān (mutual cursing) are his mother’s patrons. A child born to a free woman after liʿān has no walāʾ; his estate belongs to the collective body of Muslims, who stand as his agnates in preference to his mother’s agnates—unless his father later acknowledges him.

Anyone emancipated with zakāh funds leaves his estate to the Muslim community, and the same ruling applies, according to Mālik, to the foundling (laqīṭ) and the sāʾiba, because the sāʾiba is freed on behalf of the Muslims and his walāʾ is therefore theirs. Some of Mālik’s associates disagreed, yet what I have related is the position most famously transmitted from him and the distilled doctrine of his school.

The person who finds a foundling has no share in the latter’s estate, for the finder did not set him free; walāʾ belongs only to the emancipator, so the estate must revert to the Muslim community.

Likewise, if a slave owned by a dhimmī accepts Islam and that non-Muslim master then emancipates him, his walāʾ belongs to the Muslims and never reverts to the former master.