and they agree, then after his death, should they retract their permission, they must swear by Allah that they had not meant thereby to give the bequest final effect, but had agreed only out of fear that he might recover and deprive them of his support. Once they take that oath, they may revoke the approval they had granted.

The same applies if, during his last illness, he asks their leave to bequeath more than one-third of his estate to distant people: they too must swear as described, and their oath allows them to withdraw their earlier assent—unless the owner had already executed the transfer, delivered the property, and the beneficiary had received it before his death, in which case they have no right to retract.

If a man bequeaths his slave to someone and that slave owns property, two reports are transmitted from Malik. One states that the slave’s property follows him, so both he and his goods go to the legatee, and nothing passes to the master’s heirs, just as in emancipation. The other view is that the slave’s property belongs to the master’s heirs, as would be the case in a sale, a gift, or a charitable donation.

Whoever makes one bequest—or several—has all of them upheld unless one of them is invalid. If he subsequently says, “The slave (or the item) I bequeathed to So-and-so is now for So-and-so,” that statement revokes the first bequest and confirms it for the second beneficiary.

If a person issues one bequest after another, then provided the two do not conflict and neither nullifies the other, both are carried out. But if they contradict one another and the latter supersedes the former, only the latter is enforced and the former is void.

Should a man bequeath an equal sum of dinars to the same beneficiary in two separate clauses of the will, without declaring that one cancels the other or that both are to be combined, the beneficiary is entitled to just one of the two stated sums. If, however, one bequest is larger than the other and they are of the same category, the beneficiary receives the larger of the two—whether the bequests concern cash, movable goods, weighed or measured commodities, counted items, slaves, or real estate. Whenever one is greater and both belong to the same type, the greater prevails.

If he bequeaths two different kinds, whether in one clause or in two, the beneficiary receives both. And if at one point he bequeaths him a specified amount of dinars or dirhams and at another time one-third of his estate, the beneficiary takes whichever is greater, unless