manufactured goods, just as it applies to animals. The Messenger of Allah ﷺ borrowed a young camel and repaid it with a better one, a mature four-year-old camel (1). This indicates that equivalence applies to animals as well. According to them, however, animals are value-assessed items, because they restrict fungible items to everything sold by measure or weight, involving no impermissible manufacture, and for which forward sale is valid. This is an excessively narrow definition.

The correct view is otherwise: a fungible item is anything for which an equivalent can be found. Thus, in this case, we say that she is entitled to an equivalent of the recorder that he gave her as a bridal gift and which later proved to be usurped. According to the madhhab, however, she is entitled to its value.

But if he gives her a pig as her bridal gift, then in all cases she is entitled to the customary bridal gift, because pork is intrinsically prohibited, and so such a specification is invalid. If the pig is worth one hundred thousand, while the customary bridal gift for someone like her is twenty thousand, then she is entitled to twenty thousand. If she says, “This pig is worth one hundred thousand,” we say: a pig has no value whatsoever under the Sacred Law. Therefore, if someone destroys it, he is not liable for compensation, for it is not legally recognized property.

If, however, she does not know what it is—for example, he brings her a pig and tells her, “This is a European sheep”—then we say that she is entitled to an equivalent sheep, because she believed it to be a sheep. Thus, if it is an average pig, she is entitled to an average sheep; if it is among the finest pigs, then to one of the finest sheep; and if it is among the poorest pigs, then to one of the poorest sheep. This is because she married and accepted this bridal gift on the understanding that it was a sheep from among the sheep. Someone might say: the customary bridal gift is better for her,