“whoever revives dead land, it becomes his.”
Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm Āl al-Shaykh said: “Revival is like fencing; its particulars are determined by local custom, and its forms are many. Among them are the following:
– If someone surrounds an area of wasteland with a solid enclosure—customarily built of bricks, blocks, stone, cane, wood, or the like—he has revived it and therefore owns it. The height that fulfils the requirement of revival has been put at one and a half metres; anything lower is merely staking out the land, not reviving it.
Al-Sharḥ al-Kabīr states: ‘Staking out wasteland is, for example, to heap earth or stones around it or to encircle it with a low wall; this does not confer ownership, though it does make the person the one most entitled to it.’
– If he digs a well and reaches its water table, he has revived that site and is entitled to its reserved zone (ḥimā) and its customary utilities, provided the surrounding land is wasteland. If the well lies within an inhabited district, then every resident may use the utilities according to local custom.
– Whoever channels water onto wasteland from a spring or watering place thereby revives that land.
– Whoever diverts water away from a tract of wasteland that has been inundated—because it cannot be cultivated while submerged—and withholds the water so that he may farm it, has revived it.
– If a person takes a stony or wooded piece of wasteland, removes its stones, fells its trees, levels and grades it so that floodwater can pass over it and it can be dry-farmed (baʿl), he has revived it.
In short, whatever people customarily regard as revival is deemed revival; the particulars differ according to the intended manner of benefit and the customs of each land.
- Shaykh Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm also said: As for bare land on which there is absolutely no sign of revival, it is not owned merely by laying claim to it—even if it is in the claimant’s possession.