On one occasion, a man came to Hasan unsure of what to do because, when one of his slaves had run away, he had sworn to cut off the slave’s hand in punishment when he found him. Must he fulfill this gruesome oath? Hasan recalled that the Companion Samura, who had settled in Basra, had told him that the Prophet used to encourage charity and forbid mutilating prisoners, and that the Prophet had once said, ‘Whoever kills a slave, we will kill him; whoever mutilates a slave, we will mutilate him.’
