If someone were to ask, “What is the benefit?” we would say: Its benefits are:

First: each of the two partners encourages the other.

Second: the capital of each of them may not be sufficient to enable them to import large quantities of merchandise that yield substantial profit. This is something that occurs in practice. For example, one person may have one million riyals and the other may have one million riyals, but one million alone is not enough to purchase large quantities of goods that would yield considerable profit. So they join together and purchase the merchandise.

Third: neither of them may be able to conduct trade with his own capital alone, and so he needs to combine the other’s capital with his own in order to broaden the business.

However, he stipulated certain conditions:

First: his statement, “with their capital,” indicates that it must belong to them. But is this a condition? Or should we say: with capital that belongs to them, or capital over which they have the right of disposal?

The second view is that it may either be capital belonging to them, or capital for which they are agents or guardians, or the like. With respect to agents, however, authorization is essential.

Second: his statement, “known”—the opposite of which is unknown. This is because, when the partnership is dissolved, it is necessary to revert to the capital: each of us wants his own capital. Since it is necessary to revert to the capital, this cannot be done unless the capital of each partner is known, so that, when the assets are liquidated, it may be known what belongs to each of them.