768 – Anas (may Allah be pleased with him) reported: “The Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—was with one of his wives when another of the Mothers of the Believers sent a servant carrying a qaṣʿa (large wooden bowl) filled with food. The wife struck it with her hand, breaking the bowl. The Prophet held her liable, placed the food in the broken bowl and said, ‘Eat.’ He then handed the sound bowl to the messenger and kept the broken one.”

Related by al-Bukhari and al-Tirmidhi. Al-Tirmidhi named the one who struck the bowl as ʿĀʾisha and added that the Prophet—peace and blessings be upon him—said, “Food for food, and a vessel for a vessel.” He declared the ḥadith authentic. (1)

Vocabulary of the ḥadith
• “Some of his wives”: i.e., he was in the apartment of ʿĀʾisha (may Allah be pleased with her).
• “One of the Mothers of the Believers”: the sender was Zaynab bint Jaḥsh (may Allah be pleased with her).
• khādim: Al-Miṣbāḥ states that khādim applies to a male or female servant; the feminine khādimah is uncommon. The plurals are khadam and khuddām.
• qaṣʿa: a bowl used for eating and drinking, usually made of wood; plurals qiṣāʿ and qiṣaʿ.
• “He gathered it”: meaning he collected the pieces of the broken bowl.

Points derived from the ḥadith
1 – The narration shows that whoever destroys another person’s property must replace it with an equivalent item, whether the object is of a measurable or weighable type, or of a non-measurable type such as a garment or a vessel. The scholarly disagreement on this issue will be discussed, God willing.