seizing it, the sale is valid on the sounder opinion. It is invalid to sell a specified half of a vessel, a sword, or the like, whereas it is valid—according to the preponderant view—to sell a garment whose value is not diminished by cutting it. Likewise, one may not sell a pledged item without the pledgee’s permission, nor a culpable slave whose person is liable for a monetary penalty, according to the stronger position; liability attaching only to his financial capacity does not affect the sale, and the same ruling applies to liability for retaliation.
Fourth: Ownership must reside with the contracting party. Therefore, a sale concluded by an unauthorised intermediary (fuduli) is void, though in Imam al-Shāfiʿī’s earlier opinion it is suspended: if the owner later ratifies it, it is binding; otherwise, it is not. If someone sells the estate of his deceased relative thinking the relative is still alive, the sale is valid on the more reliable view.
Fifth: Knowledge of the object. The sale of “one of these two garments” is void, whereas the sale of “one sāʿ from this heap” is valid when the total number of sāʿ measures is known—and even when it is unknown, on the stronger opinion. If he sells “a houseful of wheat,” or “the weight of this pebble in gold,” or “for whatever price so-and-so sold his horse,” or “for one thousand composed of dirhams and dinars,” the transaction is invalid. If he sells for “coin” and a single currency predominates in the town, that currency is deemed intended; but if two currencies circulate without one predominating, specification is required.
It is permissible to sell an unspecified heap of grain at the rate of one dirham per sāʿ. If he sells it for one hundred dirhams at the rate of one dirham per sāʿ, the sale is valid provided the heap yields one hundred sāʿ; otherwise it is not, according to the sound view. Whenever the counter-consideration is a specified item, mere inspection suffices.
The stronger opinion is that selling absent goods is invalid; another view permits it, in which case the option of rescission arises upon inspection. A prior viewing before the contract suffices for items that ordinarily do not change before the time of sale, but not for those that usually do. Viewing part of the merchandise suffices when it indicates the remainder—such as the visible surface of a heap, a sample of a uniform commodity, or where the rest is naturally enclosed, like the rind of a pomegranate, an eggshell, or the inner hull of a walnut or almond. Each item must be inspected in the manner appropriate to it.
The sounder position is that merely describing the goods with the detail required in a salam contract does not suffice. A salam contract concluded by a blind person is valid; some, however, maintain that if his blindness occurred before he could distinguish objects, it is not.