1798 - Issue: He said: (And if one makes an exception in divorce and emancipation, the majority of narrations from Abu Abd Allah, may Allah have mercy on him, are that he refrained from answering. In one place, he definitively stated that the exception does not benefit him.)

This means if he says to his wife: "You are divorced, if Allah wills." Or to his slave: "You are free, if Allah wills." Ahmad refrained from answering due to the difference of opinion among the people regarding this and the conflicting evidence. In one place, he definitively stated that the exception does not benefit him in either case. He said, in the narration of Ishaq ibn Mansur and Hanbal: Whoever takes an oath and says: "If Allah wills," he does not break his oath, but he has no exception in divorce or emancipation. Hanbal said: He said: (1) Because they are not oaths. This is also the view of Malik, al-Awza'i, al-Hasan, and Qatada. Tawus, Hammad, al-Shafi'i, Abu Thawr, and the People of Reason (Ahl al-Ra'y) said: Exception is permissible in both, based on the saying of the Prophet, peace and blessings of Allah be upon him: "Whoever takes an oath and says: 'If Allah wills,' he does not break his oath." (2) And because he has linked divorce and emancipation to a condition whose existence has not been realized, so they do not take effect, just as if he had linked it to the will of Zayd, and his will was not realized (3). Our argument is that he has placed the divorce and emancipation on a suitable subject, so they have taken effect, as if he had not made an exception. The hadith only encompasses oaths, and this is not an oath; it is merely a conditional statement. Ibn Abd al-Barr said: The instruction regarding exception only came in the context of an oath by Allah the Almighty, and the statement of the predecessors: "Oaths by divorce and emancipation," only came (4) for the sake of breadth and approximation. There is no oath in reality except by Allah the Almighty, and this is divorce and emancipation. We have already discussed this issue in the [section on] divorce in more detail than this (5).

1799 - Issue: He said: (And if he says: "If I marry so-and-so, she is divorced." She is not divorced if he marries her. And if he says: "If I own so-and-so, he is free." Upon owning him, he becomes free.)

There is a difference in narration from Ahmad regarding these two issues. In one narration: Neither divorce nor manumission takes effect. This was narrated