She said: “Abu Bakr had granted me twenty wasqs of harvested dates from his property at al-ʿAliyah. When he fell ill he said, ‘My daughter, I had given you twenty wasqs of dates; had you gathered them in or taken possession of them, they would have been yours. But today they form part of an estate to be inherited, so divide them according to the Book of Allah, Exalted is He.’

If the item being gifted is already in the recipient’s hand—held, for example, as a deposit (wadiʿah) or on loan for use (ʿāriyah)—and the donor then makes it a gift to him, the recipient’s continued possession counts as the required taking of possession; no fresh handover is needed.

It is valid to gift a debt to the very person who owes it; that counts as clearing him of the liability. In principle a person may give as a gift anything that may lawfully be sold.

A gift suspended on a future condition is invalid, such as saying, “If such-and-such happens, I have given you such-and-such.”

Likewise, a time-limited gift is invalid—for example, “I give you this for a month or for a year”—because a gift is a permanent transfer of ownership of the property itself and therefore does not admit of time-restriction, just like a sale. An exception is a gift linked to the donor’s death, such as saying, “When I die, I have given you such-and-such.” In that case it is treated as a bequest and is governed by the rules of wills.

A person may not give gifts to some of his children while leaving out others, nor may he favor some over others in the amounts given. He is required to be just among them, giving them equally. This is based on the ḥadīth of Nuʿmān ibn Bashīr, whose father brought him to the Prophet ﷺ after giving him a gift and asked the Prophet to witness it. The Prophet ﷺ said, “Have you given all your children the like of…"