he understands what he is told—being seven years old or thereabouts—and the instruction is of a kind that children like him are customarily given, then there is no liability. For example, you tell a ten-year-old boy, “Buy me some bread with this dirham.” The boy goes, and by Allah’s decree he slips on the road and dies, or a fire breaks out in the bakery and the boy perishes in it. The apparent meaning of the author’s words is that you are liable, because he is not legally accountable. But some of the companions of Imam Ahmad, may Allah have mercy on him, held that there is no liability when it is something customarily done, since people have continued, from the time of the Prophet ﷺ until our own day, to send discerning children on such minor and easy errands, and they do not regard this as an act of transgression. Whatever results from something permitted is not subject to liability.

Even if the one giving the instruction is a ruler, just as if a ruler or someone else had hired him.

His statement, “Even if the one giving the instruction is a ruler”: the word “even if” indicates a point of disagreement. Some scholars say that if the one who instructed him to descend into the well or climb the tree was a ruler, and he perished, then the ruler is liable, because a ruler’s command is not something a person can disobey—especially if the ruler is among the oppressive rulers who, if disobeyed, imprison or beat people, or the like. But if the ruler is one of the devout rulers, who would not compel you if you said, “I am unable to climb the tree,” then there is no basis for holding the ruler liable, since the person instructed can say, “I am unable.”

The correct view concerning the case of a ruler is that if he is someone whose evil is feared, such that if you refuse he imprisons you, beats you, unjustly seizes your property, or wrongs you with regard to your family, then his command is equivalent to compulsion. Accordingly, he is liable.