Ibn Ḥajar states in Bulūgh al-Marām: “Some have said that the clause on working to repay the price (al-saʿāyah) is an interpolation.”

Al-Nasāʾī said: “News reached me that Hammām related the report and treated this sentence—the instruction for saʿāyah—as Qatādah’s own words.” Al-Ismāʿīlī likewise remarked, “It is only Qatādah’s statement, inserted into the narration as transmitted by Hammām.”

Ibn al-Mundhir and al-Khaṭṭābī both affirmed that it is Qatādah’s legal ruling.

The author of the commentary on Bulūgh al-Marām, however, responded: “Everything cited to prove that the saʿāyah clause is interpolated is overturned by the agreement of the Two Shaykhs—al-Bukhārī and Muslim—who both transmit it as a statement traced back to the Prophet, and their collections hold the highest rank of authenticity.”

Accordingly, Imām Aḥmad, in one of the two reports from him, accepted this additional clause, and so did a number of his followers—among them Shaykh al-Islām Ibn Taymiyyah, Ibn al-Qayyim, and our teacher ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Āl Saʿdī—may Allah have mercy on them all. They reconciled the two hadiths.

The reconciliation, as set out by the commentator on Bulūgh al-Marām, is that the Prophet’s statement in the first hadith, “otherwise, only that part of him is freed which is freed,” means that the owner’s share becomes free immediately, while the partner’s share is freed through saʿāyah. Once the slave has paid what he owes he is fully emancipated, assuming the status of a mukātib (a slave with a manumission contract). Al-Bukhārī explicitly adopted this view.

It also appears that entering into saʿāyah is the slave’s own choice, because the report says “without hardship being placed upon him.” Were it obligatory to compel the slave to earn and hand over the sum, it would impose severe hardship—something that, according to the majority, is not even required in kitābah, since kitābah itself is not mandatory. The same principle applies here.

Al-Bayhaqī took the same reconciliatory stance and concluded that no contradiction remains between the two reports whatsoever.

This is correct, though it entails that the partner’s share of ownership persists if the slave elects not to undertake saʿāyah.

Chapter: The Sale of a Mudabbar Slave

al-Mudabbar (passive participle) is a slave whose emancipation has been deferred until his owner’s death. He is so called because his freedom is set “at the back end” of his master’s life, or the term may derive from tadbīr, which in Arabic means reflecting on future consequences.

Hadith 420

Jābir ibn ʿAbd-Allāh (may Allah be pleased with them both) said: “A man from the Anṣār declared one of his slaves to be mudabbar.”

In another wording: “The Prophet ﷺ was informed that one of his Companions had set a slave of his free as a mudabbar, yet he possessed no other property. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ therefore sold the slave for eight hundred dirhams and sent the price to him.”

Unfamiliar term

dubur: with ḍamma on both the dāl and the bāʾ; it means the rear or back of something, and here refers to ‘after the owner’s death’.