1. Muhammad ibn Yahya has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad from al-Hassan ibn Mahbub from abu Hamzah al-Thumaliy who has said the following: “I once asked abu Ja‘far عليه السلام, about the case of a man who says to another man, ‘O so and so write to my wife her divorce or to my slave that he is free; if it is a divorce and setting free of a slave. He (the Imam) said, ‘It is not a divorce or freedom until he says by his own tongue or his own handwriting and with the intention to divorce or set a slave free. This can happen by counting new moons and in the presence of witnesses when he is absent from his family.’”