of it, and he does not ask for it without a valid excuse, his right is annulled.
2 – As for the ḥadith, “There is no shufʿah for one who is absent,” it is weak and therefore cannot stand against the sound report cited earlier: “He is to be waited for, even if he is absent” – narrated by the Four Sunan, whose transmitters are trustworthy.
Al-Wazīr said: They are agreed that if the person entitled to shufʿah is away, he may claim it when he returns, because it is a monetary right whose cause has arisen; it therefore becomes fixed for him, like inheritance.
3 – Shaykh ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Saʿdī said: The correct view is that the right of shufʿah, like other rights, is not lost unless something shows the holder’s willingness to forfeit it. The Lawgiver established it to remove harm from the co-owner of property, so what the Lawgiver has affirmed cannot be nullified except by a word or deed that clearly indicates consent to abandon it. The one who holds this right needs time to deliberate. As for the two ḥadiths, “Shufʿah is like untying the hobble,” and “Shufʿah belongs to the one who darts for it,” no ruling can be based on them, nor may they be used to demolish a judgment affirmed by the Law.
4 – Shaykh al-Islām (Ibn Taymiyyah) said: Any transactions carried out as a ruse to void shufʿah are invalid, for shufʿah was legislated to ward off harm; permitting stratagems to annul it would defeat the very aim of the Sharīʿah.
Ibn al-Qayyim said: Anyone familiar with the traditions, the principles of jurisprudence, and its issues will not doubt that the Companions’ consensus on prohibiting and nullifying legal stratagems that conflict with the faith is more firmly established than their reported consensus on acting by analogy.
He also said: Among the invalid ruses is that the seller gifts the share to the buyer, after which the buyer gifts him something that pleases him. This does not abolish shufʿah; it is a sale even if they avoid uttering the word. Stratagems are many, but what counts are the underlying intents.
5 – The four Imams maintained that if the beneficiary of shufʿah waives it before the sale, the waiver is ineffective, because it is the relinquishment of a right before it has become due.