and then said: “To proceed: what is the matter with people who lay down conditions that are not found in the Book of Allah? Any condition that is not in the Book of Allah is null and void, even if there were one hundred such conditions. The judgment of Allah is more deserving, and the condition of Allah is firmer. The right of clientage belongs only to the one who sets the slave free.”

Lexical Notes
• kātabat: derived from the root kataba, which originally means “to join or gather,” because the instalments of the contract are gathered together on the slave.
• awāq: plural of uqiyyah; one uqiyyah equals forty dirhams. Its present-day equivalent in current currency was detailed earlier in the section on zakat.
• walāʾuka lī (“your walāʾ will be mine”): walāʾ literally means help and support, but in the Law it is restricted to the bond created by emancipation—that is, freeing the slave and delivering him or her from servitude.
• famā bāl: an expression meaning “what is the state” or “how is it that…?”
• fī Kitāb Allah: i.e., in His Law which He has prescribed for His servants and in His universal ruling.
• wa-in kāna miʾata shart (“even if it be one hundred conditions”): the number one hundred is not intended as a limit but as emphasis and hyperbole, signifying the general rule. This is supported by his words: “Whoever stipulates a condition that is not in the Book of Allah, it is void. The judgment of Allah is more deserving and the condition of Allah is firmer.”
• aḥaqqu and awthaq: although they appear in the comparative form, they are not meant comparatively—as though some rightness or firmness existed on both sides—but rather as descriptive adjectives: “the judgment of Allah is the truth” and “the condition of Allah is the most solid.”

Overall Meaning
This is a magnificent and weighty hadith because of the legal rulings it contains and the manifold benefits it gathers. Some scholars even devoted independent monographs to it, deriving from it more than four hundred rulings and points of benefit. We shall here summarize the most important of those rulings.

In brief, the story is that a bond-woman belonging to one of the households of Medina, named Barīrah, entered into a mukātabah with her owners—that is, she purchased her own freedom from her masters—for nine awāq of silver, paying them one uqiyyah each year. Barīrah used to serve ʿĀʾishah, who therefore knew her well and cared about her.

Barīrah came seeking ʿĀʾishah’s help to discharge what remained of her mukātabah so that she could be rid of bondage, for a slave under a mukātabah contract remains enslaved as long as even a single dirham is still owed. Out of ʿĀʾishah’s eagerness to do good and her habitual generosity, she said to Barīrah: “Go to your owners and tell them that I am prepared to pay them the entire sum of the instalments at once, and your right of clientage will be exclusively mine.”

Barīrah conveyed to her owners what ʿĀʾishah had proposed, but they refused unless the walāʾ remained with them, hoping thereby to gain prestige when the freedwoman was linked to them and perhaps some material benefit such as inheritance or mutual support. ʿĀʾishah then related their stipulation to the Prophet ﷺ, whereupon he said: “Buy her from them,”