with the food and the dish to the Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, while he was in the house of one of his wives. The wife in whose house he was became jealous and struck the messenger’s hand, causing the dish to fall and break. The Prophet, peace and blessings be upon him, instructed the wife of the house to give her own dish and food to the other woman, and said: “Food for food, and a vessel for a vessel.” (1) This is clear evidence.

Then—glory be to Allah—which is more precise: for a person to compensate a cup with a cup, or a sāʿ with a sāʿ? Undoubtedly, the former. For equivalence between one cup and another is completely exact, whereas equivalence between one sāʿ and another must necessarily differ, even if only by a slight excess.

Thus, the principle is that fungible property is compensated with its equivalent, because the correspondence of a fungible item with its equivalent is stronger than the correspondence of its value with the item itself. Value is an estimate and approximation, whereas equivalence is true equivalence.

Issue: It states in al-Rawḍ (2): “Water in a waterless desert should be excluded from this, for it is compensated according to its value in that location; this was mentioned in al-Mubdiʿ.” This is because water is highly valuable in a waterless desert. Thus, if someone unlawfully takes another person’s waterskin in a barren desert—that is, in a place of peril—and, when they reach town, says, “I will give you a waterskin of water,” then according to the general principle, water is compensated with water, and since it is an equivalent, that should suffice. However, this is an exception. They said instead that he must give its value at that location. A waterskin in the desert, for example, may be worth a thousand riyals, whereas in town it may be worth nothing; indeed, he may have sold it there and benefited from it. So how can it be said, “Return its equivalent”?! This is an exception even according to the established position of the school.