just as we do not sell the clothes worn by an insolvent debtor burdened with debts, nor take away the food he eats—because these are matters of his own personal necessity—so too is the preparation of his body.

After that comes a debt secured by collateral, then an unsecured debt. Thus, debts are discharged before everything else.

The apparent meaning of his words, “debts, Hajj, and otherwise,” is that Hajj should be performed on his behalf, even if the man had abandoned Hajj with no intention of performing it. But this requires further consideration. The sounder view is that, if he abandoned Hajj with no intention of performing it, then Hajj is not performed on his behalf; rather, he is left to his Lord, who will punish him on the Day of Resurrection, because he abandoned Hajj while having no desire to perform it.

But if, hypothetically, the man was merely negligent, saying, “I will perform Hajj next year,” and so on, then the view that Hajj must be performed on his behalf becomes necessary. Ibn al-Qayyim (d. 751 AH) mentioned this in his book Tahdhīb al-Sunan and said: “The principles of the Sacred Law entail that Hajj should not be performed on his behalf.” The same applies to zakah: if a person abandons it out of miserliness, rather than through negligence in payment, then we do not pay zakah on his behalf. But if he abandoned it through negligence and then died, then it is appropriate that we pay zakah on his behalf, because he hoped to pay it, but death came upon him before he could do so.

His words, “from all of his property,” mean that the debt is discharged from all of his property, not from the bequest, whether or not he made a bequest concerning it. Thereafter comes the bequest, and after that, the inheritance.

His words, “debts, Hajj, and otherwise,” include expiations, if he owes any expiations, and zakah, if he owes zakah, because these are obligations owed to Allah; Hajj is likewise.

Let us give an example of this: a man dies, having bequeathed one-third of his estate, while owing a debt