Page:The Algebra of Mohammed Ben Musa (1831).djvu/156

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twenty dirhems and ten-seventeenths; and this is the legacy.

 

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On Emancipation in Illness.

“Suppose that a man on his death-bed were to emancipate two slaves; the master himself leaving a son and a daughter. Then one of the two slaves dies, leaving a daughter and property to a greater amount than his price.^[1]” You take two-thirds of his price, and what the other slave has to return (in order to complete his (102) ransom). If the slave die before the master, then the son and the daughter of the latter partake of the heritage, in such proportion, that the son receives as much as the two daughters together. But if the slave die after the master, then you take two-thirds of his value and what is returned by the other slave, and distribute

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1. From the property of the slave, who dies, is to be deducted and paid to the master’s heirs, first, two-thirds of the original cost of that slave, and secondly what is wanting to complete the ransom of the other slave. Call the amount of these two sums $p$; and the property which the slave leaves $\alpha$.
   Next, as to the residue of the slaves’ property:
   First. If the slave dies before the master, the master’s son takes ${\tfrac {1}{2}}[\alpha -p]$; the master’s daughter ${\tfrac {1}{4}}[\alpha -p]$, and the slave’s daughter ${\tfrac {1}{4}}[\alpha -p]$.
   Second. If the slave dies after the master; the master’s son is to receive ${\tfrac {2}{3}}p$, and the master’s daughter ${\tfrac {1}{3}}p$; and then the master’s son takes ${\tfrac {1}{2}}[\alpha -p]$, and the slave’s daughter ${\tfrac {1}{2}}[\alpha -p]$.