when she conducts the contract herself; but if she places her affair in the hands of a man who then marries her off, two narrations are reported from Malik. One treats it like the male slave’s marriage: the master may annul it if he wishes or let it stand if he wishes. The other regards it as invalid, though the master may validate it by explicit approval.

If a male slave marries with his master’s permission, the master has no right to annul the contract thereafter, nor does divorce fall under his authority; the power of divorce rests with the slave himself.

Any dower that becomes binding upon the slave is taken from his own property, should he possess any, whether the marriage occurred with or without the master’s leave. If he is insolvent, the dower remains a debt upon him and will be collected from any property later given to him. His obligatory payments to the master and the value of his labour, however, give his wife no claim. Should the slave be emancipated, his wife may pursue the dower from him as an outstanding debt.

Other scholars of Medina, apart from Malik, hold that both the dower and the wife’s maintenance come out of the slave’s earnings and assets, because the master’s permission to marry implicitly permits him to earn what covers dower and maintenance. If the slave is under a muḫāraj arrangement with his owner, those obligations are met from whatever exceeds the sum he owes.

The dower of a slave-woman remains part of her personal property unless her master seizes it. The master may discharge the dower on her husband’s behalf, before or after consummation, because it is like any of her other property, which he is entitled to remove from her hand whenever he wishes.

If a free man consummates marriage with a slave-woman to whom he had stipulated a dower, then later purchases her, the dower belongs to her master. The same applies if her master emancipates her after the husband has consummated the marriage. If he buys her before consummation, however, neither she nor her master is entitled to any dower at all. Yet if consummation has not taken place when her master frees her, and she elects to remain with her husband, the dower is hers alone and not her former master’s.

Whenever a male slave falls under the ownership of his wife, or a female slave under the ownership of her husband, the marriage is automatically dissolved the moment ownership is established; that dissolution occurs without pronouncing divorce. He may then have intercourse with her by right of ownership, with no waiting period required.

A slave is permitted to take a concubine from his own property with or without his master’s permission, though another opinion restricts this to cases where the master has expressly allowed it; both views are reported among those who maintain that the slave