Muwatta, Book of the mudabbar (manumission at death)

The Book of the Tadbir (Mudabbar) is the twenty-sixth book of the Muwatta in the transmission of Yahya ibn Yahya al-Laythi from Malik ibn Anas, in the edition of Bashshar Awwad Ma'ruf (1997), in the second volume. It occupies pages 369 to 378 in the PDF pagination, and contains 26 numbered texts (2348–2373) in seven chapters. It concerns tadbir, in which a master ties the freeing of his slave to his own death, and also the children of such a slave, his sale and his injuries, the difference between it and a bequest of freedom, and the injuries of an umm walad. ^{1 2}

• Judgement on the child of a tadbir slave-woman (2348–2352): the child of a tadbir slave-woman follows her in tadbir, and the children of a pregnant woman, a mukatab and a tadbir slave. ^{1 3}
• General reports on tadbir (2353–2354): a tadbir slave whose freedom is hastened by instalments, and a tadbir slave who has property present and absent. ^{3 4}
• Bequest in tadbir (2355–2361): the difference between a bequest of freedom and tadbir, and the sharing of the third among tadbir slaves. ^{4 5}
• A man's touching of his slave-woman after tadbir (2362–2363): intercourse with a tadbir slave-woman, and its effect on her tadbir. ⁵
• Sale of the tadbir slave (2364–2368): a tadbir slave may not be sold, the sale of his service is uncertain, the common slave, and a tadbir slave when the slave becomes a Muslim. ^{6 7}
• Injuries of the tadbir slave (2369–2372): an offence against another person, its blood-money, and the master's debt. ^{7 8}
• Injuries of the umm walad (2373): the guarantee for an injury to an umm walad falls on her master to the extent of her value. ^{8 2}

Malik holds that a tadbir slave may not be sold or moved from his place, and that tadbir is a bequest of a third of the property from which the master may not turn back once it is made, unlike a bequest of freedom, which the testator may revoke whenever he wishes. He treats the child of a tadbir slave-woman as she is, and holds that the offence of a tadbir slave takes precedence over the master's debt. ^{1 4 9}

Each text of the book has its own record. It names the highest narrator and the chapter, gives the substance of the report in the museum's own wording, and records the editor's takhrij where it is needed. See Tadbir for the places where its rulings appear in the book. ¹