729 – Jābir ibn ʿAbd Allāh reported that the Messenger of Allah ﷺ said: “If you sell fruit to your brother and it is then struck by a calamity, it is not lawful for you to take anything from him. On what basis would you seize your brother’s wealth without right?” It was narrated by Muslim.
In another wording recorded by him: “The Prophet ﷺ instructed that losses caused by blights be waived.” ⦗1⦘
Vocabulary of the ḥadith
• jāʾiḥah: The Arabs say, jāḥat-hum al-sanah, “the year devastated them,” tajūḥu and ījāḥah. Linguistically, a jāʾiḥah is any scourge that brings great ruin to a person’s property, sweeping it away entirely—such as torrential rain, hail, wind, fire, or locusts. In the legal sense it is whatever destroys all or part of the fruit through a heavenly or earthly affliction in which human beings play no part.
• bim yaʾkhudh: The alif is omitted when the preposition bi precedes the interrogative mā. Because mā here contains the meaning of the interrogative hamzah—which must head the sentence—one should understand it as abim yaʾkhudh. The hamzah expresses censure. The same rule applies in f-bim, ʿalām, and ḥatām, where the alif of interrogative mā is dropped after a preceding preposition.
• law biʿta … fa-lā yaḥill laka: Two grammatical analyses are possible. First, law functions as a conditional particle, and fa-lā yaḥill is the apodosis. Second, law may carry the meaning of in (“if”).
Points derived from these aḥadith
- They demonstrate the prohibition of selling fruit before it begins to ripen, and its ripening is when it turns red or—