and then pays one of them. If he says to the pledgee, “I have settled the debt that was secured by the pledge,” while the pledgee retorts, “No, you have repaid me the debt that carried no pledge,” the judge divides the payment between them in proportion to their respective claims after each of them has sworn an oath. The same ruling applies when one of the two sums is backed by a surety and the other is not. Should either party refuse to swear, judgment is entered against him on the strength of his opponent’s oath.
If the owner sets free a slave who is under pledge, the manumission is effective provided he is solvent; he must then discharge the entire debt at once, for it immediately falls due upon him. If he is insolvent, the manumission does not take effect and the slave remains as collateral. When he later redeems the slave, the emancipation takes effect; but if he neither redeems him nor owns any other property, the slave is sold to satisfy the debt.
If someone is holding an item as collateral and, when he produces it for its owner to redeem, he declares that it is not the original pledged object, his word is accepted, subject to his oath. By contrast, if the pledgee claims that he has already returned the pledge to its owner, his statement is not accepted without proof.
When a person acknowledges that a certain commodity in his possession belongs to another, yet alleges that he is keeping it as collateral and the owner denies this, the owner’s word prevails and the burden of proof lies with the one who claims it to be a pledge. The same principle applies if one party says, “I deposited this article with you,” while the other says, “You pledged it to me”: the owner’s statement stands unless the claimant produces evidence.
Should the owner of a garment die and the person holding it assert that it is a pledge, the deceased’s heirs swear—so far as they know—that they are unaware of any such claim, and they recover their property. Likewise, if the heirs themselves are in possession of a pledge and its owner maintains that he settled the deceased’s debt yet left the pledge with him, the heirs swear by Allah that they know nothing of such repayment, and they retain the amount the pledgor has acknowledged, secured by the pledge. If the creditor is still alive when the claim is made, he must take a decisive oath—“You have not paid me anything”—and the pledgor remains liable for the debt.
Mālik held it permissible for one debt to be pledged as security for another, whereas the other jurists did not allow a debt to serve as collateral for a different debt.
When two men pledge a single item under one contract, then