Chapter on Hiba and ʿAṭiyyah (Gifts and Donations)

A gift is the voluntary transfer of ownership of a specific, existing asset from one person to another during the donor’s lifetime. If the donor stipulates a known counter-consideration, the transaction is a sale; it is invalid when the consideration is unknown, except where knowing it is impossible.

A gift is concluded by an offer and an acceptance, or by any mutual action that clearly signals consent. It becomes binding once the donee, with the donor’s permission, takes possession—except for property that is already in the donee’s hands. The donor’s heir stands in his place.

When a creditor releases his debtor from the debt with wording such as “you are absolved,” or by describing it as charity or a gift, the debtor’s liability is extinguished even if he does not expressly accept.

It is permissible to give as a gift any tangible item that may be sold, as well as a dog that one is permitted to keep.

Section

A parent must treat his children equitably in gifts, in proportion to the shares they would receive in inheritance. If he favors some of them, he must restore equality either by taking back the excess or by giving additional amounts to the others; but if he dies before doing so, the gift remains in force1.

No donor may retract a binding gift except the father. The father is allowed to take and appropriate from his child’s property whatever will not harm the child and for which the child has no need. Should he dispose of the child’s property—even that which he had previously given him—by sale, manumission, release of debt, by seeking to take it back before revocation, or by attempting to acquire it2 through mere words, intention, or an unrecognized act of possession, the transaction is invalid; only after he has formally revoked the gift does it become valid.