and leprosy and vitiligo are likewise included among these three ailments: if any one of them appears in the male or female slave during the year, the buyer still has the choice either to keep the slave or to return him or her.

The one-year warranty is reckoned only after those initial three days, although some hold that the three-day warranty is itself subsumed under the year-long warranty. The year is counted from the very day on which the sale is concluded; once twelve months have elapsed, the seller is free of every warranty.

It is discouraged to make payment of the price during the three-day warranty period as a stipulated condition, yet there is no objection if the buyer volunteers the payment without being asked—and the same applies if he volunteers it at any time during the one-year warranty.

Any sale that a judge conducts involving the property of an insolvent person, an orphan, or a debtor is treated like a “sale of exemption,” that is, a sale without any subsequent liability. It has been reported from Mālik that litigation over either the three-day or the one-year warranty is to be heard only in Medina itself, or in the case of people elsewhere who expressly stipulate those warranties and undertake to honor them—and this, to me, is the preferable view.

Under the same heading comes the practice of muwāḍaʿa, an escrow arrangement: when a high-priced concubine is sold, she is placed in the custody of an upright trustee until she menstruates. The fact of her menstruation can be verified only by trustworthy women, so the trustee must be someone whose womenfolk are reliable, or else a single trustworthy woman—or a group of trustworthy women.

If the purchase price is held in escrow with a just trustee until she menstruates, all the better. Alternatively, the price may remain with the buyer until she emerges safely from muwāḍaʿa, and he does not hand it over until the girl has menstruated. Should the purchaser, without any prior stipulation, choose to pay the seller in advance, that is permissible.

Any harm that befalls the girl while she is in muwāḍaʿa is borne by the seller; the loss is always his, and her maintenance remains his responsibility until she comes safely out of muwāḍaʿa with the appearance of menstrual blood. Even if she is bought at the very onset of her period, both parties treat that bleeding as her menstrual period—so long as it is indeed a legitimate menses.