a cup like it for the owner of the first cup? According to the established position of the school, no; rather, he is entitled to the value of the cup. According to the stronger view, however, he must provide a cup.

If he slaughtered someone else’s mature ewe—one with such-and-such qualities in fatness, leanness, and colour—and the one who slaughtered it has an ewe exactly like it, is he liable to compensate for the ewe with this ewe, or with its value? According to the school, he must compensate with its value. The stronger view in both cases is that a cup is compensated with a cup, and an ewe with an ewe.

If a man takes someone’s loaf of bread and eats it, then according to the school he compensates for it with its value, because it involves permissible workmanship and is also not sold by measure. According to the stronger view, he compensates for it with an equivalent loaf. Thus, if two men are standing by the baker, and the baker hands a loaf to one of them, who takes it, then the other snatches it from his hand and eats it, how is he to compensate for it? According to the school, with its value. According to the stronger view, he says: “Wait until he gives me my loaf, then take it, and the whole matter is settled.”

The stronger view, then, is that fungible property is anything that has an equivalent or a close counterpart, whether it is sold by measure or weight, animate or inanimate, manufactured or unmanufactured. Evidence for this is that the Prophet borrowed camels and repaid them with their equivalent (1); he did not repay their value. According to the school, if you borrowed an ewe from your neighbour, you would return its value, not an equivalent ewe, because it is not fungible property: it is neither sold by measure nor by weight. Further evidence is the incident of the dish and the food: one of the Mothers of the Believers sent food to the Prophet in a dish with a messenger, and the messenger came