Scholarly disagreement:
The three imams—Mālik, al-Shāfiʿī, and Aḥmad—maintain that a maʿdin (mineral) is something other than rikāz (buried treasure), as noted earlier.
The Ḥanafīs, by contrast, regard maʿdin and rikāz as one and the same.
Within the three schools that distinguish the two, another divergence appears:
• The Mālikīs and Shāfiʿīs restrict the term maʿdin to gold and silver alone.
• The Ḥanbalīs hold that every substance generated by the earth yet not of its own essence—and which is not a plant—qualifies as a maʿdin, whether it flows, such as nafṭ (petroleum) and qār (bitumen), or is solid, such as iron, copper, gold, and silver.
The preponderant view is that of the Ḥanbalīs, in accordance with the definition adopted by chemists, who are the specialists in this field.
Minerals fall into three categories:
- Solids that can be smelted in fire: gold, silver, iron, copper, lead, and mercury.
- Solids that neither smelt nor melt in fire: juss (gypsum), nūra (lime), kuḥl (antimony), and the various stones, such as ruby and salt.
- Liquids: nafṭ (petroleum) and qār, which is bitumen.