a liability ijāra to accompany the animal, see to its needs, help the rider mount and dismount whenever required, lift the load on and off, and fasten or unfasten the saddle-litter. In the lease of a specific animal, however, the lessor’s sole duty is simply to place the lessee in unobstructed possession of the animal. If that animal perishes the lease is dissolved, and the lessee gains the option of rescission should a defect appear. No such option exists in a liability ijāra; the lessor must instead supply a substitute. As for food that is carried to be eaten, it must—on the sounder view—be replaced once it has been consumed.

Section
A lease is valid for any term during which the rented item will, in all likelihood, remain intact. One opinion limits the term to no more than one year; another extends it to thirty (years). The lessee may realise the benefit himself or through someone else: he may ride the animal, and someone of like status may reside in the property, but he may not house a blacksmith or a fuller. An object from which the benefit itself is taken—such as a particular house or a specific animal—may not be substituted. By contrast, an object by means of which the benefit is obtained—such as a piece of cloth delivered for sewing or an infant entrusted for suckling—may, according to the sounder view, be replaced. The lessee’s possession of the animal or cloth is that of a trustee for the duration of the lease, and—on the more reliable opinion—even after it ends.

If the lessee ties up a hired animal for carrying or riding and then fails to use it, he is not liable should it perish, unless the stable collapses on it at a time when, had he used the animal, the collapse would not have struck it. Likewise, if property perishes in the hand of a worker without misconduct—such as a garment hired for sewing or dyeing—he is not liable provided exclusive possession was not his alone, meaning that the hirer sat with him or brought him to his own house. According to the pre-ponderant opinion he is still not liable even when he is alone. A third view distinguishes: a shared worker—one who undertakes a task on the basis of liability—is liable, whereas a private worker—one who hires out his own time for a set period—is not.

If someone hands a garment to a fuller to beat it or to a tailor to sew it, and the work is completed without any wage having been stipulated, the dominant opinion is that the worker is entitled to no wage; another view grants him a wage; a third differentiates—if he is known for that trade, he is entitled to it, otherwise not—an opinion some find commendable.

Should the lessee overstep proper bounds—by striking the animal or jerking its reins more sharply than customary, by placing on it a rider heavier than himself, or by lodging a blacksmith or a fuller—he becomes liable for the rented asset. The same applies if he hires the animal to carry one hundred ratls of wheat but loads one hundred of barley instead, or the reverse, or if he hires it to carry ten qafiz of barley and loads wheat in its place, though not vice-versa. And if