would cause harm to its current possessor; instead, the possessor is required to swear an oath, and the property is returned to him without asking for a guarantor.

Whoever produces one upright witness to support his claim to a slave, and the slave dies before the claimant has sworn together with that witness, bears the loss himself. The same ruling applies when there are two witnesses who die before their uprightness can be established.

If testimony is produced that an article now acknowledged to be in another man’s hand actually belongs to the claimant, and the witnesses do not add, “We know of no sale, gift, or charitable donation,” the claimant must himself swear that he has neither sold, donated, nor given it away in charity, and judgment is entered in his favor. This is the view of Ibn al-Qāsim.

Ashhab agreed, adding that if the witnesses die before making that declaration, or are absent and cannot be reached to be asked, they must be questioned when they are found; but if they refuse to say, “We know of no sale, gift, or charitable donation,” their testimony is void. The ruling on this sort of testimony—whether it must be categorical or based on knowledge, and the jurists’ disagreement on the matter—has already been set out in the Book of Testimony.

Mālik said: If a man buys a female slave and she claims to be free, asserting that there are people in her own town who know her and can testify for her, and the town she names is close by, and the judge, on the strength of her allegation and of inconclusive evidence or a single upright witness, thinks her claim has some merit, he should also write on her behalf to the judge of that town. If her own statement is all that exists, however, the judge is not to interfere with her owner on her account and is not to detain her.

If the inconclusive testimony convinces him that she ought to be detained, then all her maintenance costs fall upon the purchaser who holds her, and he is not to approach her for intimacy until the judge writes to the judge of her town to investigate her case. Should a reply arrive that obliges him to send her to that town, he must do so; but he should not act unless grounds that warrant such a transfer are established before him. Otherwise, he is not to trouble her owner or the man from whom he bought her merely because of her claim.

If she later retracts her statement, her claim is null—unless it is known that the retraction was made out of fear, for coercion is impermissible.