and it varies according to the type of property involved, the locality, and the strength or weakness of governmental authority; for anything whose legal status has not been explicitly fixed by the Sacred Law is referred back to custom.

2 – Al-Rawḍ al-Murbiʿ and other (Hanbalī) manuals state: Whoever steals something that is not kept in a ḥirz—whether hanging fruit, kathar (palm pith), or anything else—must repay double its value, yet his hand is not cut off because the condition of ḥirz is absent.

3 – This ruling is one of Imam Aḥmad’s distinctive positions, differing from the other three Imams.

Sharḥ al-Mufradāt adds: Whoever steals fruit from the tops of trees or livestock grazing in open pastures is not subjected to amputation, even if the property is enclosed by a wall and guarded; instead, he must reimburse double its worth, in light of the ḥadith of Rāfiʿ ibn Khadīj. The sound view within the madhhab, however, is that anything other than trees and livestock, when stolen from a place that is not a ḥirz, is compensated only once, because doubling the compensation runs counter to analogical reasoning and therefore may not be extended beyond the specific cases named in the text.

4 – The majority of jurists maintain that in every situation only a single compensation is due; this is the view held by the three Imams. They answer the ḥadith by claiming it has been abrogated—an assertion for which no proof exists.

Al-Wazīr (Ibn Hubayrah) said: There is consensus that the punishment of amputation is lifted from anyone who steals dates that are still hanging on the palms when they are not secured, and the same applies to kathar.